Graduation Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations and hats off to All the Graduates! Thank you so much for entering our drawing for a set of the new bedding. 

More than one hundred and eighty of you shared your graduation tales, some even included photos.

Every single heartwarming story I received inspired me and made me even more aware of how much perseverance and determination it takes to pursue our passions. It was remarkable to read about so many people who courageously changed their paths, no matter what their age or how many responsibilities they already had. Like so many of you, I am grateful to my parents, teachers, and friends for helping, supporting and challenging me as I wandered, succeeded, stumbled, discovered and created the road ahead. Emerson said it better than I ever could:

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

I wish you all the very best and don't forget to dream BIG!

Through random selection, the winner of the new bedding set is:

Some of you may know from Sheri from her amazing quilting creations at Bungalow Quilts. Sheri sent in the following moving story with two photos, which she's permitted me to share with you here. From Sheri:

My favorite graduate is my daughter, Caitlin.

Cait started her education at age 6 months, with services through the Cincinnati Association For The Blind And Visually Handicapped. From the very beginning of her education, through her high school graduation, Cait has always had a positive attitude. Cait completed her high school education at 19 years old, then deferred her diploma for two years while she did some job training Children's Hospital. At the end of her training, she was the only person in her class to be hired on at Children's. 

Cait is always willing to learn something new. She learned to use the city bus system (not easy!), learned to do her own banking. Learned a new skill and got a promotion at her job! I'm very proud of her perseverance and positive attitude. She's a lovely girl. 

P.S. She's learned to sew :) 

Sheri Cain

Catilin, you inspire me! Keep sharing your positive outlook. The world is a much better place with you in it.

xo,

kate

Sleep Tight

Hi everyone! It's been a while, but that's because we've been busy, busy getting ready to launch three new bedding lines! Some of you might recognize these prints from — oh, i don't know — certain colorful fabric collections?

And now i'm thrilled to let you know that these bedding ensembles are now available online at

Sunnyside

Hills and Valleys

Daydream

As a special promotional offer, Macy's is taking an extra 20% off your purchase through today. No code required. Going to make our bed right now!

xo,

Kate

And on the 13th Day of Christmas...Finally, Fabric!

Franny, Lou, and the orphan-kitty-who-we-found-last-week-and-who-appears-to-be-spending-the-holidays-with-us-and-might-even-end-up-living-here just asked us: 

So what's a giveaway without fabric?? They're right (as usual). So, here we are to announce the 13th day of our 12 Days of Giveaways.

Enter using Rafflecopter (below) by 11:59 AM Eastern time on Wed. Dec 18th for one of these prizes:

Moda Fabrics jelly roll of Sunnyside

photo courtesy of Missouri Star Quilt Co.

Or…for a peek into the distant Christmas future, you might win either a jelly roll or layer cake of Solstice…my next wintery collection for Moda to be released in 2014!

More photos of Solstice to come soon…i was just too excited when these precuts arrived yesterday and wanted to share them with YOU!

And as a last-minute shopping special, we're having a sale on all holiday aprons, dishtowels, and our felt table runner at shopkatespain.com. Through this Sunday (Dec 15th), receive 20% off all. Use code joy20 at checkout.

Good luck on the giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Layer Cake Lemonade Quilt

Today i'm sharing a really fast, fun and free quilt pattern from my favorite Kimberly at Fat Quarter Shop. It's called Layer Cake Lemonade, and i'm not even kidding you can make this cute quilt top in about an hour. It uses one Moda Layer Cake with a little leftover that you could use as part of the backing. Here's an instructional video from Kimberly and the crew!

I decided to make mine using a layer cake of Sunnyside.

Though this quilt is so simple, there are lots of possibilities for how to arrange fabrics. In the video, Kimberly shows one variation in which she separates the prints into lights and darks and uses the darks for the large squares and the lights for the small rectangles. Here are some other variations in which you can see how Kimberly reversed the arrangement of lights and darks to create a different effect:

When i made my quilt, i decided to switch things up a bit and separated the fabrics into cool and warm colors. My hope was that it would look like dappled sunshine. Here's how it turned out: 

And here it is outside in the morning light. With long-arm shadows from my expert helper ;) 

I definitely plan on finishing this up and making a few more for Christmas gifts! If you'd like to make one too (beware, they're addictive), you can download the free pattern. And then guess what? Kimberly is generously offering a sale on all Layer Cakes this week!

**UPDATE** Have a look at Amy's version of this same pattern and in Sunnyside too — i like her arrangement much more than mine!**

photo used with permission

Happy Monday!

xo,

kate

Moda Blog Hop: Day 5

Welcome to my day of the Moda Fabrics "Size Matters" blog hop! Today i'm posting alongside Barb and Mary of Me and My Sister Designs. I'm sure they have some laughs awaiting you so please be sure to hop on over to their blog too.

 The theme for the Moda Schoolhouse at Quilt Market last spring was "Size Matters" and we were each given a quilt block design to explore with regard to scale. What a fun challenge! I don't know if the block i was given has an official "name", but here it is along with a link to the free pattern download.

When i first looked at this block after seeing some of the others, i thought, "humph, that's a pretty boring looking little thing." But i very quickly learned that looks can be deceiving! We'll get back to that in a minute...

So, i thought about the way size and scale play with our perception. Sometimes big things definitely draw our attention because, well, they're BIG! This sculpture, "Untitled" by Anish Kapoor was irresistible to me for just that reason. This big intriguing shiny metal disc got me to walk closer to it and then...

...it revealed all sorts of surprising little things to me.

Both vantage points were totally unique. Pretty neat, huh?

And then there's this nice looking red door. I love when people paint doors different colors and i happen to like this rosy shade of red. Nice details too. Looks like a regular door, right?

Think again!

Fun, huh? You can see how something that's very familiar can change significantly depending on our perspective...and the scale relative to other familiar things.

And then there's composition. You have to figure out how to arrange everything and what you're going to focus on. Take this cat for example. Pete and i were taking an evening stroll when we crossed in front of its window. In this first photo, the cat is only a small part of the bigger scene...so there's more of a story to tell because you get a little more visual information that enables your imagination to wander.

Look how much the "story" changes after Pete took a few steps closer. Now it's pretty much all about that adorable fluffy cat! Get it?

There's a wonderful picture book by Istvan Banyai called Zoom. It really plays around with all these ideas of perception/scale/zooming in/zooming out/focus etc. Someone made a video of it that you may want to watch — but you might want to turn the volume off...it's just as good without the sound. I guess in a nutshell, if you start thinking of every visual frame as a potential quilt...there’s no end to your imagination or the possibilities!

Which brings me back to my boring little block. Let's have a look at it again, shall we?

It's four half-square triangles. That's it. It kind of reminded me of a paper fortune teller from my childhood or like one of the great pyramids seen from 30,000 feet! I started to play around and before i knew it, constellations of designs and patterns were appearing before my eyes with each turn. First, i just wanted to see what this block did if i took it and repeated it as is: 

Aha! I always wondered how that spinning pinwheelie quilt pattern was made! But then i thought i needed something to focus on and some contrast in scale, so i made a border for each block at 1/2 scale. When they came together they looked like this: 

Ok, i'm hooked! Next, i made one of those whole blocks with border at 1/2 scale and doubled the size of the biggest one. It looked like this: 

Then i went back to that original block and started rotating it around a few times and landed on this:

So...i got out some fabric and started to make the blocks using my newest fabric collection, Sunnyside (which should be shipping any day now! yippee!). Instead of just opting for a light and dark colored fabric, i threw in a mid-tone as well just to see how that changed things. Here's what that looked like:

And then here's how the whole block went together:

and then i just couldn't stop! I flipped the darks and this happened:

and then this!

And yes, before i knew it, i was head-over-heels for this little block and well on my way to making it into a whole quilt. Photos to come...soon.

Oh, and one other way that "Size Matters" is in the size of the pile of fabric! And we're giving away a gigantic Fat Quarter Bundle of Sunnyside! Thank you, Moda! Uh, i don't have a photo of the actual FQB, but here's a look at the whole collection.

To enter this random drawing, just leave a comment. That's it. Only one entry per person, please. Winners will be announced on September 16th. Good luck! Don't forget to visit Kathy Schmitz, Minick & Simpson and Primitive Gatherings tomorrow.

PS: On a more solemn note, tomorrow we'll be remembering all the people and families who lost friends, colleagues and loved ones on September 11th. It's truly the size of our hearts that matters most.

Surtex and Sunnyside

Hi everyone! We're in the finish-line sprint getting all our boxes packed up and ready to head to the Javits Center in NYC to set up out booth at Surtex. I'm so excited to be showing some new products and design collections and am looking forward to a great show! If you're attending, please stop by and say hello. We'd love to meet you.

 

But alas, this time of year is also bittersweet because i miss having a chance to see all my dear friends at Quilt Market. If you're in Portland, can you please give everyone a big hug from me? And then skip on over to the Moda booth to have a peek at Sunnyside! If you're not going to be there (like me, sniff sniff), here's another little peek.

Yes, there's some driving rain and stormy skies, but they help to make the flowers grow once the sun finally comes out again. More on all of this...soon.

You know who else loves the sun? These two!

And we are going to crazy miss them while we're away! But they'll be in good hands and you should see the bucket of toys and tubs of treats we leave with our kitty sitter...

I'll be posting photos on Instagram of our booth setup if you'd like to catch a peek. Otherwise, see you back here soon!

Have a beautiful day.

xo,

kate

Large-Block Quilts Tour and a Giveaway!

Hello hello! Today i'm happy to be participating in my friend Vickie Eapen's blog hop book tour. So glad you could join me for a peek at one of the many fun, simple and quick quilt patterns from Vickie's new book:

When a complimentary copy arrived in the mail, i was so surprised to see that the cover quilt was made with my fabric collection, Terrain! What an honor.

Something i really like about this book is just what the title says, the blocks are big! Which means piecing goes together really easily, seams nest perfectly and points are sharp — well, i got pretty close which is an improvement for me. There are lots of great patterns to choose from and after flipping through trying to make up my mind, i finally decided on a pattern called Quaint. Here, Vickie made it using Denyse Schmidt's fabric line, Aunt Edna.

I picked this block design because i thought the stars looked like suns and i wanted to show you another little peek of my newest fabric collection, Sunnyside. For those of you who were wondering, Sunnyside will be in shops this September (sorry for the shameless promo). I think i'll be continuing on and making the whole Quaint quilt, but here is the one gigantic 20" block i've made so far:

It went together in no time flat (even for me), so this book would also be great for quick gifts or fun retreat quilts that you could easily finish in a weekend. The good news is that Vickie and Martingale were so generous to offer a copy of this fab book to one lucky winner! Please leave a comment to be entered in the drawing. I'll pick a random winner on May 1st — what a nice way to start the month! Be sure to visit all the participating blogs for a total of 10 chances to win — you may have to go back to the posting date to find where to leave your comment. For winners outside the U.S., Vickie may opt to send you an electronic copy (eBook) instead of a hard-copy.

4/20 Vickie

4/21 Me and My Sister

4/22 Natalia Bonner

4/23 Kathy Brown

4/24 Jen W

4/25 Carol's Craft Blog

4/26 A Spoonful of Sugar

4/27 Me!

 4/28 Stefanie R.

4/29 Stitch This!
On a personal note, i met Vickie back in 2009 at my very first Quilt Market. Hard to believe it was that long ago already. Then in August 2010, when my dear friends Joyce and Sarah were opening the doors of their new quilt shop outside Cleveland, sweet Vickie made an hour long drive to be with us for the celebrations!

I'll never forget that. And now we're celebrating her first book. What an accomplishment for such a well-deserving, talented and kind person. Congratulations, Vickie! Keep up your creative and inspiring endeavors.
xo,
kate

Sneak Peek

. . . more peeks coming soon!