Saturday, February 27, 2010

Filling The Void



Don't you find that when things happen in your life, things really happen big time? The timing is usually off and everything should be finished yesterday! I love that pressure but it can cause a lot of insanity.  I have been battling bronchitis for two weeks now but I have been forging ahead, albeit slowly, and working at some new things.

I have just finished one fabric line and am working on a second one. They'll be showing at Spring Market in Minneapolis in May. I can't wait!

                                              

In the meantime, I am working with an incredible group of artists from varying fields at a new site, CraftEdu. This is a new on-line learning site for crafters. I am going to teaching a few courses and am working on the content right now. Is there anything that you're looking for in a quilt, knit or scrapbooking class that you haven't seen? I always love to hear what you're interested in. You can check out my portfolio here.

Check out the latest Quilts and More magazine. That's my little monkey bib on the cover. There's another bib of mine inside and a cork board idea! So fun.


I hope that you're getting a lot accomplished this week. It's been great staying inside weather. Is anyone else anxious for spring? I am. xo, L

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Gung Hey Fat Choy! Happy Valentine's too!


Happy Chinese New Year! It is the year of the tiger!



It is a great day to celebrate with family and friends. We had a wonderful celebration at our Chinese school last weekend. Three lions opened the ceremonies and every child in the school performed in a song or dance on stage. The show was followed by a yummy dinner!




xo, L

Thursday, February 11, 2010

UFOs and NUFOs


It has been an odd week. A week of new stuff and a week of old stuff. I've been invited on the faculty of CraftEdu.  You will have to check it out. We're working on some fun stuff and it will be a fun and inspiring place to hang out. If you are on Facebook, please become a fan on our page. Otherwise, you can sign up for updates.

One of my "resolutions" this year has been to try to go through my stash and either finish projects or discard if possible. I was cleaning out a few things the other day and found some quilt tops. The design above, Byzantium, is one of my favorite designs. I loved art history in university and I loved the Byzantine period. This design was inspired by the tiles of that era.



These two tops were really quick tops that I did when I first started quilting. I wanted to practice piecing and this was a really simple pattern. 


Now, with UFOs, there has to be NUFOs [new UFOs]. I got this lovely book from Kim Hargreaves and I was crazy enough to start a sweater with Kidsilk Haze. Super fine yarn and super tiny needles. Yikes!


In other miscellaneous news, I don't normally have a lot of gadgets and tools but I bought this guillotine recently. I am in love.  I love my tonic scissors so I had no problem investing in their cutter. Love it.


See you soon! xo, L

Saturday, February 06, 2010

The A-Team. Awesome. Alluring. Aurifil.

It has been one crazy, crazy week. Not a lot of sewing but a lot of stuff happening. First, I am happy to be able to announce that I am on the A-Team, a team of designers invited by Alex Veronelli, Product Manager of Aurifil, to share his/her love of Aurifil threads. What's not to love?

The beautiful color range of the Aurifil line is unsurpassed by any other brand. Do you remember this quilt from last year? I tried to buy thread to be used for piecing and quilting and couldn't find color that matched the  colors in my Inspiration fabrics until I bought a few spools of Aurifil. No kidding.



Here's a sampling of the colors in the range of cotton Aurifil threads. Can we say oooooooh?





If you have visited my website in the past, you will have notice the gorgeous spools of Aurifil thread gracing my photos. 




I wrote a brief review of Aurifil threads here last year but I will post a full review on the website in the near future. I'll let you know when I have it up.

On the fabric front, I've been busy working on a couple of fabric lines. One line is pretty well finished. There's a teeny, tiny peek at the line if you squint and look at the drawings underneath the color chart above [sorry, that's all I can show you for now]. I am looking forward to showing this line in Minneapolis at Spring Market!

Oh, did I mention that we had two tae kwon do testings and one rank ceremony this week? I may need to take a vacation next week but there's an even bigger project that I need to tackle. Great job guys! I'm so proud of you.





Phew! That's a lot of news for today! See you. xo, L