Row by Watery Row

In its fifth year, the Row by Row Experience is an opportunity for quilters throughout the US and Canada to visit quilt shops, collect patterns, make a row quilt, and win prizes. . . and have a whole lot of fun and memorable experiences in the process!

Sounds like a typical shop hop, right? But it's quite different. Quilters don't have to buy passports, they don't have to pay a fee, and they can collect rows from a variety of locations to assemble a quilt from eight different row patterns. Each participating shop has created an original pattern for a 36"-wide row following a theme. The theme for 2015 is H2O--Water. The row patterns are free, but they can ONLY be obtained by visiting the quilt shops in person. Prize-eligible quilts need to be finished--that means quilted, bound and labeled. The row-collecting starts on June 21 (Summer Solstice!). And ends on September 8.

And the whole event originates from Syracuse, NY, my home base. With just a few days left to prepare for the beginning of the event, I chatted briefly with Janet Lutz, owner of Calico Gals in Syracuse, and the originator of the nationwide Row by Row Experience. She said, "With over 2650 participating shops, all focused on our June 21st start date, most all the details are in place. We're ready! The shops are very excited to create a fantastic experience for quilters traveling from shop to shop and between states and provinces. My best advice is enjoy the journey, drive safely, and experience shops that are new and different from your usual routine."

As a pattern designer, this is my third year working with shops to prepare their patterns for the event. Two years ago, I worked with two shops to create their row patterns, and last year I assisted six shops by creating their row patterns. This year I was thrilled to help create a grand total of 13 original patterns for twelve shops.

Better get your travel journal ready, you'll want to go out of your way to visit these shops to get your row patterns for the 2015 event.

Here's the Hummingbird Highway Row By Row Experience Roll Call (in alphabetical order by state or province). I don't have final photographs for each shop's row. Since I don't want to blow their big reveal, if I don't have the quilt photo, I'll just provide the pattern title, and you'll have to investigate further. Each state or province has a facebook page and many of the row samples can be found there.

California. Monica's Bead & Quilt Creations, Palm Desert. Oasis

Illinois. Quilts & More, Stronghurst. Thirsty

Kansas. Sunflower Quilts, Hiawatha. Rubber Duckies

North Carolina. Wish Upon a Quilt, Raleigh. Great Quilter Reef

Nevada. Quiltique, Henderson. Save Every Drop














New York. Calico Gals, the home of the Row by Row Experience, Syracuse. Drip, Drip, Drop

Ohio. Quilt Foundry, Maumee. Quilting Quackers

Pennsylvania. The Sewing Box Quilt Shop, Somerset. Make a Little Wish

Pennsylvania. Sew Special, Uniontown. The Giant Rubber Duck

Saskatchewan. Cindy-Rella's Sewing and Quilting, Regina. Message at Sea






Texas. Buttons N Bows, Houson. Great Egret
















Wisconsin. The Calico Shoppe, Eau Claire. Anchors Aweigh



West Virginia. Sew Special, Morgantown. Aunt Phibian and Her Beau









 






Happy Travels and Happy Stitching!

joan

Books and Art in the Big Apple

Last Thursday, I got on a train headed from Syracuse, New York to New York's Penn Station. After a bit of retail therapy and a really yummy dinner at the hotel in Times Square, my first real objective for the weekend was a book-signing at BEA - a super-sized wholesale book show held annually in May.

All the big publishers have booths at the event, with lots of author signing going on all around me, I wasn't sure anyone would be interested in my book, When Bad Things Happen to Good Quilters! Guess what. . .they were! The line started to form at the Taunton Press booth shortly before the signing was scheduled to begin.

And I had stacks and stacks of books to sign! Perhaps I should have spent some time toning up my hand muscles to prepare!

I signed each book, and took some time to chat and make some new friends!

Once the books were gone, it was time for Taunton to serve up some goodies from one of their newest titles in from the cooking side of the house! Samples of recipes from Blue Ribbon Canning were quite popular. . .and quite yummy!

I wasn't the only person signing books that day! Dr. Ruth Westheimer has a children's book! Leopold is about a turtle who just can't seem to get out of his shell to try new things! Cute!

And this is Meg Medina, a delightful woman with a new children's book about crossing generations and cultures through common interests. I was completely drawn in by the parrot on the cover illustration. . . of course!

On Saturday, Dave and I went to one of my favorite spots in New York. But first, you HAVE to have the Subway Selfie, right?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or, simply, The Met, is one of my favorite places anywhere. The huge collection of art and artifacts allows you to step back thousands of years in time in one gallery, then step across the hall to another gallery to see art from this past century. It's mind-boggling!

One of my favorite sections in almost any art museum is the collection of Impressionist art. Degas is famous for his portraits of ballet figures. This striking portrait done in pastels and charcoal has a deep blue velvet border on the frame.

The rooftop garden at The Met offers an escape from the busy bustling inside the museum and on the streets below. And an opportunity for another selfie.

Such a beautiful day to take advantage of the walk back to our Times Square hotel via Central Park and the Sailboat Pond.

That's it! Just a quick trip. Our return train ride on Sunday was delayed, so we spent pretty much the whole day in transition back home. But that's okay. It was such a pleasant ride and a great little getaway for an early Summer weekend!

And it's always a good weekend when there retail AND scrap are involved!

Happy Stitching!
joan

Spring Purge

Before Quilt Market in Minnesota, seems like things in the sewing studio were happening at a frenzied pace. No time to straighten, tidy, or organize. Every time I went to cut a piece of fabric, it seemed I had to clear a small spot on the cutting mat to make the cut. And, while cutting, I had to be careful that I didn't cut through a pile of completed blocks or cut fabric ready for piecing.

Problem: I have TWO cutting tables in this room. One (below) has been long buried beneath a progressively massive stack of projects on hold. I suppose I should call them UFOs (unfinished objects). But don't projects have to be started to be unfinished? Stacks of untouched fabric ready for the next idea. Crumbs from the last completed project waiting to be replaced in the stash or cut into the scrap bins. The other cutting space had stacks of 'stuff' on every corner and side, leaving just enough space in the center for a small ruler and cut. Not so much fun when you need to trim something bigger!

Ugh, and the cubbies. That third shelf down on the far left. Nightmare. Precarious stacks of lumpy wads of set-aside somethings. Kits, blocks, cut fabrics. . .you name it. Touch one thing and the whole shelf collapses onto the floor.

Attack plan: With the long holiday weekend, I rolled up my sleeves and I set my sights on finding the counters again. Armed with a small investment of stackable storage bins newly acquired from a Saturday morning shopping spree at the big box store. Mission One: Find the cutting counter. Several rounds of sort, store, purge, and organize, and behold! A cutting mat is revealed!

Mission Two: Find the second cutting mat. More sorting, storing, purging (what is WITH the MAJOR collection of dried up pens??), stacking, tidying. And ta-da! Another roomy place to cut, plan, and strategize all things quilty.

Mission Three: THAT shelf. Not so much purging, but more sorting, storing, stacking, tidying, and discovery. I found things I had forgotten I had! Almost like a quilty Christmas in May!

Okay. There's still a bit of a nightmare on the sewing table in the foreground, but that's not a space I use a lot, so I can live with that for now. It almost feels like I have a brand new sewing studio with space to cut and stage and sew without feeling cramped! And look at that empty space on the opposite wall! A perfect spot for a quilt, don't you think? How come I didn't notice that before?

How is your sewing room? Neat as a pin? or time for a re-boot? Either way. . .

Happy Stitching!
joan

Minnesota Market

Last time I wrote, I was working at a feverish pitch getting ready for the big quilt industry trade show, Quilt Market. Well, I'm back now and just wanted to offer a very quick recap of the trip.

My booth had two main focus areas: the new book When Bad Things Happen to Good Quilters and the 9-patch block in three sizes to match the three ScrapTherapy 9-patch interfacing products - the Mini Scrap Grid, and the new Middle Scrap Grid and Little Scrap Grid.

It's a leap of faith and a couple of days (many hours) that turn a plain space into something fun. I was thrilled when I saw the lime green carpet. I was told that there would be only a limited quantity of the lime color for the booths at the show, so I got lucky!

Thanks to a little help from my friends Gail and Barb, the booth really put a focus on the 9-patch. I had a contest to see who could guess how many 9-patch blocks were on display on the walls of the booth--including the 99 Bottles quilt. I'm still weeding through the results. . . What's your guess?

And a hand quilted sign kept the interfacing names straight!

After the show floor closes, it's time to relax a bit. On the walk over to the pub to meet some friends for dinner, Traveling Tap was parked briefly across the street. I snapped a pic and texted my husband--I think he was ready to jump on a plane to experience a bar on the move. The bar-on-wheels is powered by bicycle peddles at each bar-stool.

At The Local, an Irish Pub, there's no traffic light with green on top, like you would find on Tip Hill in Syracuse, but some pretty darn yummy pub pie!

The Pin Keep I mentioned in my last note was very popular as were the Hummingbird Highway pins! By the end of Market, I had accumulated quite a collection of pins!

Back home, the lilacs (my favorite) were reaching full bloom. Made it home just in time to gather up a bunch to make the house smell like heaven!

In the sewing studio, next up is testing the Ribbon Star Swap pattern so it's ready to roll soon! Maybe by the time next week's newsletter is published.

Oooh! And look what arrived in the mail while I was gone. I created a custom die for my Go! Cutter with--you guessed it--a hummingbird shape. I'm not sure where I'm going to go with this, but it's a fun way to combine scraps and hummingbirds, don't you think?

Until next time. . .

Happy Stitching!
joan

A Place for Pins

Things are starting to come together for my display at Quilt Market  - the big quilting industry trade show next week in Minneapolis.

Several designers and shops will be trading little button-style pins at the show. I have quite a few prepared, so if you see me at one of the other shows I'm going to attend this summer, you might just have to look me up to get one!

Anyway, with all this pin collecting going on, and all these scrap fabrics I have, I thought it'd be a good idea to put the two together to make a fast, fun Pin Keep for my sewing studio. You can download the free pattern here. In the meantime, here's a little run-through of the steps. And oh, the Pin Keep features the new ScrapTherapy Little Scrap Grid Interfacing! How cool is that!?

First I selected some light and medium 3-1/2" squares. Truth be known, since I wanted my background fabrics to match I cut these from a couple of fabric strips, but it would have been just as easy to pull the squares out of my scrap bin. I also selected a bunch of 2" scrap squares, fun prints in contrasting colors.

I sewed the 3-1/2" squares into 2-patches, then sewed the 2-patches into a vertical row. And set that aside for the moment.

Next, I trimmed two 9-patches-worth of interfacing from one of the sections of the Scrap Therapy Little Scrap Grid. The Little Scrap Grid comes by the panel, and each panel has two 'clusters' of six 9-patches. I just needed one-third of one of the 'clusters.' For this project, I'm not using the interfacing as I would to make a traditional 9-patch, as outlined in this tutorial.

I cut a diagonal slit in the center of each grid section.

With the interfacing fusible side down, and the 2" scrap squares right side up, I positioned each 2" square underneath the grid, and pinned it from the top, so I can still see the lines on the grid.

Then I sewed on all the solid lines.

Next I cut the interfacing on the dotted and dashed lines, trimmed the corners to reduce bulk . . .

 . . . And turned each of the 18 squares inside out through the cut in the interfacing. I used a Purple Thang to shape the corners, but I had to be careful not to poke straight through the interfacing!

I made a short stack of colorful square-shaped 'cookies.' The fusible side of the interfacing is now on the back side of the scrap square, facing out.

Next I placed the square 'cookies' on the checkerboard panel playfully as shown in the picture. And fused them in place.

Layered batting (9x30"), backing (8x29"), right side up, checkerboard quilt top right side down. I pinned everywhere, then sewed a 1/4" seam around the edge of the top, leaving a 6" opening for turning. Trim batting and backing, then turn the quilt inside out, close the opening by hand or machine and quilt.

Add a hanging sleeve on the back and pin your favorite pin collectibles to the front. There you have it - a scrappy conversation piece for your sewing room. Hey, or how about this idea--make two, sew them end-to-end and you'll have a scarf for your walking pin display!

Too much fun!

Happy Stitching!
joan

Crazy Countdown

I'm headed to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks where I'll be exhibiting at Quilt Market  - the quilting industry trade show where your local quilt shop does their shopping! Oh man! I'm sooo not ready! I have quite a few details yet to complete, so please pardon me if this week's message is short and sweet.

Here's a little preview of my booth - number 100! Right up front in the very first aisle! The pressure is on to make a great first impression!

I'm starting with these booth number Mini Mug Mats! Of course, the show provides signage for each booth, but how boring is that? I don't have a pattern for the numbers, so I just winged it with some scrap fabrics and -- you guessed it, some of that new Little Scrap Grid Interfacing I keep talking about.

With any luck, you'll see it (the new interfacing) showing up at your local quilt shop shortly after Quilt Market. AND both sizes will be available to purchase from the website shopping cart as well--coming soon! AND projects! Woot-woot!

In addition, I've been working on a tutorial for the two new grid sizes that will be on the website right along with the Mini Scrap Grid How-To. So stay tuned, and please be patient with me as all the nitty-gritty deets come together.

You see, I've been crazy busy! But still having fun in the process.

In the meantime, you can find me at the Wings Falls Quilters Guild Show this coming weekend in Queensbury, NY.

See you there?

Happy Stitching!

joan

You Gotta be in it . . .

 . . . to WIN it!!

Last week Pat Sloan and I had a nice chat about my new book When Bad Things Happen to Good Quilters. This week you have a chance to WIN a copy of that very same book! 

All you have to do is jump over to Pat's blog entry and make a comment. But you gotta do that before May 1, 6pm East Coast Time. From Pat's blog entry you can click over and listen to the April 13th conversation right on your computer. How cool is that?

After you listen (or even before that!), if you just can't wait and gotta have the book now, you can buy it here. AND if you still can't wait to start using the concepts from the book, you can download a FREE pattern extra right now, right here. 

Now, go! (and good luck!)
joan