Tuesday, March 20, 2018

New Cutie Pattern and Kit

I am tickled to announce my latest Cutie Pattern -- A La Mode.


I was hoping to take a nice spring-themed photo, but March in New York is throwing us a snow storm every few days.  Please enjoy this lovely winter photo, though.  And hope with me that today's storm will be the last one of the season!

I'm launching something new with this new Cutie Pattern -- a kit!  Check out these gorgeous Riley Blake / Pennyrose Fabrics:


I have more surprises coming, so stay tuned!


Friday, March 16, 2018

Tuesday Tutorial -- Curvy Cross-Hatching with a Walking Foot

This week's Tuesday Tutorial is on a Friday.  It's been a rough week and Friday is just as good as Tuesday, right?  Lie to me.

I had some fun today with my walking foot:



Winter is lingering so I chose a bright Neon Lemon for today's thread.


Do you have any quilt tops at home that you can finish this weekend with curvy cross-hatching?

Monday, March 12, 2018

The Browns took Manhattan

Next week is our 30th wedding anniversary.  How can I possibly be married for 30 years when I'm only 29???  It's a question for the ages.

We scheduled the trip for this past weekend and also next weekend to allow for a weather cancellation.  That would sound silly if the New York hadn't just been slammed with two major Nor'Easters within five days and another one skirting us tomorrow night.  Spring, please come soon!

While we never (and I mean NEVER) go out to eat when we're home, we go to New York City to eat.  And eat we did!

We have a wide range of tastes in food, but we only ate sushi, udon, ramen, and dim sum.  Not even a slice of pizza.  Sacrilege!  I didn't take photos of our food but I did get a video of the dim sum restaurant. 


If you've never experienced steam carts in a large restaurant, you haven't lived.  Seriously!  Dim sum is my absolutely favorite meal in the whole wide world and we had an absolutely delicious lunch yesterday at Jing Fong.



In addition to restaurants, we managed to find a few (cough*three*cough) bakeries.  I did take photos there.

We visited Dominique Ansel bakery, home of the Cronut.  We arrived in the city too late for cronuts, but what we had was delish!


After eating ramen, I told super-hubby that I wanted a cookie.  I may have mentioned it more than once (or 6 or 8 times...) We left the restaurant and BOOM!  There was a cookie bakery on the corner!

Schmackerys was Ah-Ma-Zing!



Chocolate chip and Cookies & Cream, because you are wondering.

After dim sum, we stopped at TaiPan Bakery on Canal Street and bought a bag of Chinese pastry because Oh. My. Heck!  It is so amazing and wonderful and I couldn't possibly make it and I can't buy it locally and


Sigh.

They make Hello Kitty cakes JUST FOR ME!!!

The problem with having a bag of pastries in the house is even though you intend to eat them throughout the week, your more rational self reminds you that the pastries are so much better when fresh and that they will never taste better than they do RIGHT NOW!  I'm so grateful that my more rational self spoke up.

We did more than just eat while in the city, though.  We went to see Kinky Boots.


My daughter and I used to watch Drew Carey's Whose Line Is It Anyway? when we had a television.  We are still tickled when we can find YouTube clips of the show.  We loved Wayne Brady so I was beyond excited to see him in the starring role.  He was wonderful and the show was perfect and the music was perfect and the seats were perfect and everything was perfect.  Just perfect.

In between the eating, we walked just a little.


See?  I EARNED those pastries!!!

We returned home and are back to our real lives.  I'm sad that we only had a weekend, but I am enjoying every minute of the memories.

And the pastries.




Thursday, March 08, 2018

Bonus Quilt!

One of my Cutie Quilts has a secret:  If you save the triangle trimmings, you can make a second quilt!  How cool is that?

The first quilt is Due North:


The flying geese in this quilt are BIG so the leftover triangles are big, too.  If you sew together all of the leftover triangle pairs, you can make this quilt:


The blocks are made entirely from leftovers; I added a simple 6" border to make this 42"x48" quilt.

Here's the block:


There are enough triangles to make 32 blocks and but I only used 30 of them.

The quilt is pieced in straight rows, but I quilted it on point using my walking foot, echoing the diagonal seams:


Surprising no one, I filled in the stitched lines with ribbon candy.


As one does.

I found the PERFECT thread for this quilt:  FabuLux Cuddle.



I don't want to rush anyone, but I need more babies so I can give away all of the baby quilts that are stacking up in my studio!

Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Scrappy Postcards

Sometimes the littlest bits of fabric combine to make something beautiful.  In this case, four beautiful postcards!

Rocking Horse thread and creamy 1" squares:


Giggle thread and peachy 1" squares:


Olive Trees thread and green 1" squares:


Meditation thread and earthy 1" squares:


I'm thrilled with this postcard set!




Tuesday, March 06, 2018

Learn to Machine Quilt -- Walking Foot Ribbons

This week's machine quilting tutorial uses the walking foot to stitch ribbons.  I am so incredibly in love with my walking foot and it is so much more than stitch-in-the-ditch.



Do you use fabric grippers when you stitch on the walking foot?  I find my Steady Betty bands so incredibly helpful!

A hint I didn't mention in the video:  Use a size 90 needle when stitching with FabuLux thread.

Some quick homework:  Search through your stack of unquilted tops and see if this ribbon pattern would work on any of them!