Stitched!

Has anyone heard about Stitched? It is a documentary following 3 quilters ( Caryl Bryer Fallert, Hollis Chatelain and Randall Cook) as they race to complete their entries for the 2010 Houston Quilt show.

It is showing at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts tomorrow and Thursday only. 
See the website here for more information.

Look, here is the Bottom Line....

Okay so we are now selling Bottom Line thread on cones and we have some little assortment packs of it on size M prewound bobbins for our longarming customers. We are also continuing to  carry King Tut, So Fine and Masterpiece threads on cones as well. 

We are closed on Monday in observance of Memorial Day. I plan to put some time in on my quilt for Quilts of Valor that day.  The Quilts of Valor group meets the second Tuesday of the month from 10am-1pm at the shop and they make quilts for wounded soldiers. 

Make sure you bring in any mug rugs you are still working on for the swap on Tuesday. We have nearly 70 in the swap now and the shop looks so lively with everyone's creations we will hate to give them all up on June 6th but that is when you can come in to pick up your new mug rugs. We hope you were as inspired by this swap as we were!  What shall we swap next??? 
We had people scouring the store looking for the bolt of coffee fabric on Friday and Saturday. Some customers were very covert about their search while others came in and announced they were hunting for it. Several customers receive a free fat quarter even though occasionally we had to help a little by playing "Hot and Cold". It was lots of fun.
We hope you have a great weekend!

Stonehenge Christmas Fabrics

Northcott fabric company was really on the ball because they had us ordering these Christmas fabrics for 2011 before Christmas 2010! We got them in yesterday and like all the Stonehenge fabrics they have a really lovely hand. These have gold metallic detailing on them.

We got this panel:

These coordinates:

And these patterns to make with them:

We also got a bolt of the tree skirt panel!

Only a few days left!!

The mug rug swap is closing in one week on Tuesday May 31st.  

No one has used this fabric yet:

It is super cute and just arrived recently. I can't believe someone hasn't whipped one up out of this. I may have to squeeze another one in to the swap made out of this!

We are still getting new mug rugs dropped off in the shop daily so stop by and check them out if you need a little inspiration. 

Remember, for each mug rug you enter you'll receive one back and you'll be entered in the drawing for a $50 gift card for the shop! 

Here is a little bloggy inspiration for you too, few snaps of mug rugs around the shop: 

 (with a pocket for sugar packets!)

Happy sewing everyone!

Fabric Designer Patty Sloniger

  I first heard of Patty from the Spoonflower newsletter. She won their recent contest and is Michael Miller's newest fabric designer as a result! 

I tracked her down and found out she lives a few mere miles from my house, in Katy, Texas.  She lives with her husband and kitties except for a fun and crazy month in the summer when her four step sons visit!  
She and I met for coffee at Starbucks on Sunday, May 15 and ended up talking for two and a half hours about fabric, creating and designing.
Patty grew up in Maryland, in a creative family. She feels that her mother and brother are much more artistic than she is.  Patty's favorite childhood memories are of building forts and playing in the woods and creek with her older brother. 

Patty Sloniger

She drew a lot as she grew up and studied for a BFA in graphic design at East Tennessee State University, hoping to be a packaging designer.  She now does that as a day job for a cookware manufacturer in the Sugarland area but her first job out of college was doing stationery design.  Now her goal is to become a licensed freelance illustrator.
She has played with several mediums but is really loving the fabric for her designs. She loves how a piece of fabric she designed can then be turned into something wonderful- a quilt, a bag, clothing etc...
She got started designing when planning for her wedding.  She wanted very specific designs but, having anything custom made was very pricey. She surfed around on Etsy and eventually stumbled onto Spoonflower (a company that will print as little as a fat quarter size piece of fabric with your own design on it).  She was thrilled to find this company and actually ran to the other room to tell her husband about it!  Now she has designs in her head all the time, she said it was "Definitely an addiction!"  and plays on Spoonflower so much, that her husband jokes that it is her "other man".
When I asked her what inspired her designs she said, "You never know where it will come from." Some of her favorite haunts for inspiration: the internet, her husband who is great for bouncing ideas off of - and often thinks about things "out of the box",  getting outdoors, and doing something to break routine.
She has an etsy shop called beckandlundy. She came up with this name herself, it is a combination of her mother's maiden name and her father's surname (her own maiden name). 
"It was like the two sides of myself coming together, to make stuff!"

Photo by Patty Sloniger

She is currently working on the girls half of her fabric line for Michael Miller which will debut at Fall market in Houston but, she also enjoys: cooking (and would like to cook more), making things for her house and working with wood. 
I asked her what she thought the difference was between art and craft. After careful thought she said, "I have a different answer for that now than I would have had in college, I think craft is a subset of art and not mutually exclusive. Craft is a more practical form of art."

Her favorite time to design is in the early morning. "It feels so good having the whole day ahead".  She usually begins designing fabric based on a project she wants to make. Gathering items or images in the theme she prints out pictures of looks at items and does some sketches or paintings. 

Photo by Patty Sloniger
Note from Mandy: I have no idea why it is transfers to blogger in the negative but you see the idea.

These sketches get scanned into the computer and using Photoshop she fine tunes and manipulates her designs. "I love Photoshop. I don't know what I would do without it!".  

Photo by Patty Sloniger

She doesn't want her work to look computer generated - going for a more hand sketched look is her goal.
Patty does do some sewing and quilting but finds binding a little intimidating, " I have three quilts waiting for me to get up the nerve to bind them!".  
She treats me to a sampling of her designs made on Spoonflower one a sateen, several cotton and a linen along with some adorable bibs she made with her fabrics! I can't wait to see more of her work and play with her fabric myself!
Just for fun some random questions:
Favorite color: Green
Favorite food: Beef Stroganoff
Food you wouldn't ever want to even try: Liver, fish eggs
Which super power would you choose: Invisibility
Favorite thing about yourself: Never bored, always find things to do
Nick names growing up: Patti-O furniture, Honey-child
Least favorite household chore: Laundry! "How does it pile up so fast with only two of us?"


My thanks to Patty for being so willing to let me pepper her with questions and for sharing so much! I wish her the best of luck with her first fabric line.

Batiks! Boxes of them...

 Textures!

 Beautiful flowers!

 Scales

 Leaves

and many more!

The mug rug gallery is really growing and it is becoming addictive! People have come in with as many as 6 of them at once! 

Here are a few...

You still have a couple weeks to get yours in and get entered in the drawing!

New Fabrics!

Blank Quilting Fabrics sent us:

Bugging out!!

" Notre Dame" looks like stained glass to me so pretty.

Deb and I both have an odd affinity for Halloween fabric and we could not say "no" to these two lines. One is from Marcus called Tricks and Treats with this cute panel:

Wouldn't the panel be cute on your door for Halloween when the Trick or Treaters arrive?

 Halloween Coordinates from Marcus and Moda

 The other Halloween fabric is from Moda and is called Trick or Treat and here is the panel for that- it has two large squares:

 Moda promises a cute table runner downloadable pattern from their website will be out soon to go with these panels!

Also in are a couple of Moda Mini Assortments:

 Owl  and Polka Dot Panel:

 Coordinates: