Stuff and Giveaway Winner

Hello! The week just got away from me. Wow. It goes so fast. I am working on a few little patterns that I'm going to offer through my local quilt shop. Almost done. [big sigh of relief heard in town]

I'm excited to announce the winner of the Sew The Perfect Gift book. Sorry it was a bit messy. I was trying something new and it flopped! I hope that you run out and buy the book though because it is a beauty.

The winner posted on Friday, September 30:

katie said...

Very nice, like it lots.

8:43 AM  

Katie, send me your details through the e-mail link on the right sidebar.

My friend, Marianne Byrne-Goarin is up next in the Aurifil Designer of the Month Event. Check out Pat's interview with Marianne and remember to make a project and to post it on our Flickr site. You could win great prizes.

I've got a post on repeats and selvages. Check it out.

Talk soon. Wedding to go to this weekend.

xo, L

I See The Finish Line

I see the end this crazy phase of my summer. Yippee! I am almost finished my book. Although I've loved designing these projects, I am glad that it's over. My coughing fits are practically gone and there's been some stresses in everyday living. I am ready to relax a bit. I was thinking about having a "The Kids Are Back To School Party" right after school starts.  

I hope that your summers are going well. Have you been to any new quilt shops during your summer travels?

We also have Miss August for the Aurifil Designer of the Month Event. Her name is Jinny Beyer! Exciting right? All of the designers have been great and Jinny has a lovely project for you.

Check out Pat's interview with Jinny and don't forget to enter the contest by posting a project on the Flickr site! Good luck!

xo, L

Aurifil's July Guests Are Here

Here we are almost in the middle of July. Boy, the summer has just flown by so quickly. Aurifil's Designer of the Month are Barb Persing and Mary Hoover of 4 and 6 Designs. Hop over to the Aurifil blog to read the interview and to print off your free design! Don't forget to post any finished projects from the Design Team's projects to the Aurifil Flickr site. You'll be eligible to win some lovely threads! Totally awesome!

Enjoy!

xo, L

It's June Already?

Oh, I can't believe that it's June and that school's almost out. It seems that the time between Quilt Market and now vanished into thin air. Lots of things happening. We've been busy with end of the year stuff. Little A is a camper and we made this tent for his play [not quite finished in the photo]. Hubby made a flag pole too. Look who's apparently invented a cure for allergies or so that's what he told his teacher. [There was nothing wrong with him, btw.]

I have started writing a new book and will be working on re-vamping my website. Ooooh, I can't wait to share!

Meanwhile, do run over and check out Aurifil's Designer of the Month. She's Annie Smith and there's another great interview by Ms. Sloan!

Remember to make a project and enter to win some fabulous thread on the Flickr site set up for this event!!

Starting Friday there will be a book blog tour for Kathy Brown's new book for Martingale! Join us, won't you?

xo, L

Aurifil Designer of the Month - May 2011

Kaye England is the Aurifil Designer of the Month for May. I met Kaye when we were both invited to the American Patchwork and Quilting Creative Inner Circle Designer Retreat. She's a hoot. So talented, lively and fun!

You have to check out Pat Sloan's radio interview with Kaye. You can find it here. Download it to your computer, iPad, mp3 or other player.

Remember to post your finished project on the Aurifil Flickr Folder. Linda from NY made my pillow project and won last month!! 

Kaye designed a lovely project for the folks at Aurifil and you can download that here.

Everyone in the industry is off to Salt Lake City this week for Quilt Market. It's exciting and inspiring. I can't wait. If you are going, I hope to see you there. I am trying to be at the Aurifil Designer of the Month Schoolhouse presented by Pat Sloan. Drop by and say hi!

xo, L

Aurifil's Miss April

There's a new girl in town and her name is Susan Guzman. She's designed a lovely project for you. Go to the Aurifil blog to check everything out!!

You can find out more about Susan here:

Website:  http//www.SuzGuzDesigns.com
Blog:  http://suzguzdesigns.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1693027833

Pat Sloan interviewed Susan on March 15: Check it out here.

Remember, if you make on of our projects, load up photograph to the Aurifil Flickr group. You are then entered into the Aurifil thread prize contest. There's one winner selected each month!

xo, L

Aurifil Designer of the Month - January 2011

Good morning! It's great to announce the Aurifil Designer of the Month Event. This month's designer is Susan Brubaker Knapp. 

Here's a sneak peak at here free design. Gorgeous quilting! The rest of the quilt is gorgeous too! So, hop over to Aurifil's blog and read the interview that hostest, Pat Sloan, did for this event and to get the pattern. So awesome.

Let me know what you think! Susan's so talented, isn't she? I don't know how I'm going to follow her. I'm Miss February. I can't wait!!

Remember that if you make the top by the end of the month and load a photo to our Aurifil Flickr group, you will be in the running to win an Aurifil thread prize. So exciting!

xo, L

Aurifil Designer of the Month 2011

Something fun and exciting is going to start happening in January over at the Aurifil blog. The Aurifil Designer of the Month will start on January 6. Each month Pat Sloan will interview a designer and showcase her work. Each designer will provide a project to you for free. 

We met at Quilt Market [above photo] and we all promised to deliver one awesome event to you. You will find something to inspire you whether you like handwork, machine applique, traditional needlework, needleturn applique, or embroidery.

Besides patterns, there will be prizes. If you make up a project and post it on Flickr 30 days after the pattern is released, you will be eligible to win some Aurifil thread. There will be a different thread collection each time!

Aurifil

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/aurifil.quilt.thread

Blog - http://aurifil.com/Aurifil/News/News.html

And add yourself to the Aurifil Designer of the Month Flickr group here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/2011aurifildesignerofthemonth/

Host

Pat Sloan [website]

Susan Brubaker Knapp (January 6)

[website, Facebook]

Linda Lum DeBono (February 3)

[website, Facebook]

Kaye England (March 3)

[website, Facebook]

Susan Guzman (April 7)

[website]

Sarah Vedeler (May 5)

[website, Facebook]

Denise Clason (June 2)

[website, Facebook]

Barbara Persing and Mary Hoover (July 7)

[website, Facebook]

Jinny Beyer (August 4)

[website, Facebook]

Edyta Sitar (September 1)

[website, Facebook]

Marianne Byrne-Goarin (October 6)

[website]

Larisa Bland (November 3)

[website]

Sharon Pederson (December 1)

[website, Facebook]

Come and share the fun with us!

xo, L

Frustrations And Solutions

I have been doing a lot of behind the scenes designing and sewing. I wanted to put this one out there because I have had so many things going on that I need to give myself some pressure to wrap it up. This is one new project that I will be teaching on-line at CraftEdu. It's called Chirp! and I hope that you like it as much as I loved designing it.

We all love beautiful quilts and seeing the end result, right? I think that we should share our little boo-boos too. We need to learn from each other. I thought that you'd love to hear about my experience with quilting this little baby. Before I begin though, I need to tell you that I am a "paid" supporter of Aurifil Threads.  Having said that, I can tell you how much I love Aurifil thread and that my love of this thread did not come from being a supporter of their thread. Instead, I got to realize this first hand.

I design with many, many different colors in each quilt. I like to add many different textures, layers, shades all at once to make my designs pop. As a result, I often [perhaps "exclusively"] use monofilament thread to quilt my quilts. I have been burning through my thread stash for the bobbin thread. Different brands and I won't name them because I still think that they're good threads. I hadn't tried Aurifil in any great capacity because of availability and my huge stash of other threads.

Well, I was working on Chirp! at a weird, late hour of the night and I got the center background portion all quilted with the leafy vine only to really realize that the bobbin thread was pulling up too much for my liking. I had adjusted everything but I could still see the bobbin thread here and there. I took my seam ripper and ripped out all of the quilting. Crazy, I know. Did I tell you that I'm anal when it comes to these things? [One day I will tell you the story about "Believe" and how I appliqued one side panel in two days.] Or, it could have been because I was doing this in the wee hours of the morning.

Anyhoo, I popped in Aurifil Mako 50wt. #5015 [happens to be one of my favorite colors, by the way] in the bobbin and on top. It was like butter. It made me glide along effortlessly while quilting those vines and leaves. It felt incredibly light and smooth. The resulting quilting was nicely textured and not too overbearing. Awesome.

xo, L

Happy Days

I hope that you had a wonderful Easter. We went up to Toronto to visit with family and friends over Spring Break. It was a much needed break as things have been super crazy around here. My friend and co-homeroom mom, Joanne, found this project on-line and I made up this sample of an adorable bunny for Little A's Spring Party craft project. So cute.

First, tomorrow is my birthday! Whee! I'm not fussy about my birthday but I won't complain when I get a cool box from the UPS guy. Look what I received from the folks at Aurifil. Now, they didn't send this specifically for my birthday but what timing!

I received this awesome case filled with thread! Alex, from Aurifil, allowed me to choose 40 spools of thread from their color card and the remaining 8 were threads of their choosing. The color card is fabulous. Nothing beats the Aurifil array of colors. Luscious and decadent color.

I love the case that came with the threads. I wanted to be like my little one and take the case to sleep with me!! [My little one has slept in his sled in my living room and in his snow suit in bed.]

Yummy and sexy! The greens may look the same but let me assure you that the changes are subtle and delicious! Am I tempting you yet? You need to run out and buy some of this thread for yourself. Why?

I must admit that I had a large thread collection before trying Aurifil threads. One day I bought some at the Lancaster quilt show and I fell in love. No more scant seams because the thread is fine [but strong!]. I tried to find some thread to match my "Inspiration" fabric line and couldn't find any colors from other brands at my local quilt shop. That's when I bought the Aurifil threads at Lancaster. 

Okay, so I am going on and on about this thread. Let the photos do the talking! Thank you, Alex and Aurifil!!  After I catch my breath, I'll have to show you some photographs of some fun places that I've been to lately.  xo, L

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