Perfect Timing

It hardly ever happens that the stars and planets align to bring two new items to stores at the very same time and in the same season. But on a rare occasion, this serendipitous intersection does occur —like now! Fabric and plates. Coincidence or a little Good Fortune? Hmm. Either way, i'm so happy to let you know these colorful Chase porcelain plates are now available at Crate and Barrel online and in stores. Yippee!

photo © Crate and Barrel

They feature the Pagoda pattern from my Good Fortune collection and have been interpreted beautifully in glazes of green, yellow and blue. I thought the green set would look vibrant and spring-ie with a placemat made out of Pagoda in the colorway Waterfall *reaching for my "to do" list and dreaming of spring now!*

As i mentioned in the previous post, Good Fortune yardage has been hitting the stores this week and in addition to here, it recently landed here and here!

And since it is Friday...you know what that means! A little fur to end this post. It's short, but so darned sweet.

Hope you have a great weekend!

xo,

kate

Happy News Will Come To You

I am so excited to share that Good Fortune should be landing on the shelves any day now! If you can't wait...you don't have to! It's already available at Fat Quarter Shop (shameless, i know).

Julie from Cosmo Cricket was so thoughtful to send me this adorable tutorial link she found for making fabric fortune cookies. It's from Staci's crafty blog, and i thought it was so cute. A couple days later, Martha's eNewsletter came in and lo' and behold...another tutorial for making felt fortune cookies for Valentine's Day! Isn't that a great idea? Love it. I read through both tutorials and realized i didn't have felt, floral wire, or glue on-hand — which was pretty much everything you'd need — so with a little resourcefulness, i came up with a hybrid version. This project literally takes about 10 minutes to make.

For materials:

• Two 4" circles of any fabric print (i used...no surprise...Good Fortune)

• One 4" circle of double-sided fusible interfacing (i used Thermoweb Heat'n Bond Heavy®)

• Garbage bag twistie ties

1. Iron Heat'n Bond to wrong side of one fabric circle #1

2. Fold circle #2 in half, then open it back up and place it on work surface with wrong side facing up.

3. Place one twistie tie across the centerline of fabric circle #2 using the folded line as a guide.

4. Peel off paper backing of Heat'n Bond from circle #1 and iron circle #1 to circle #2 (the twistie tie will be sandwiched between the layers).

5. While still somewhat hot (you might need gloves), determine which fabric you would like to appear on the outside of your fortune cookie and fold in half so that fabric is on the outside. Then fold the sides together to form a fortune cookie shape (step 3 of Martha's instructions has a good diagram, and Staci has some good pictures that show this step as well). Here's what it looks like on the underside:

6. Staci pins hers to let it cool, i just held the points together and fanned the cookie in the air for a couple minutes.

7. Write a fortune on a piece of paper, slip it into the cookie and that's it. Need fortune ideas? Here's a fun place to start.

Happy New Year (of the Dragon)!

I hope it's filled with Good Fortune — of all kinds.

It's A Mystery

A little before Christmas, i got an email from Kimberly Jolly at the

Fat Quarter Shop inviting me to be one of the designers for their

2012 Designer Mystery Block of the Month Club. I barely finished reading her note when i replied with an emphatic YES! I'm so honored and excited to be participating — especially to be included among this list of amazing Moda designers who

have also joined the fun:

Aneela Hoey

Blackbird Designs

Bonnie and Camille

Bunny Hill Designs

Cosmo Cricket

Fig Tree Quilts

Me and My Sister Designs

ME!

Minick and Simpson

Pieces from My Heart

Primitive Gatherings

Sweetwater

What this also means is that i've already been lucky enough to work with Bonnie and Camille's beautiful new fabric collection, Vintage Modern. I love Bonnie and Camille and they've done it again with a line you're sure to Swoon over (don't you just love that pattern?!). Vintage Modern ships in May and if it's not yet on your list of fabric to covet, it should be. As i was playing around with some block design ideas, i quickly discovered that no matter which prints/colors you combine, they all look beautiful together. I'm dying to see what the finished quilt looks like, but...it's a mystery!

Kimberly also made us this cutie little button that i've added right over there on the right sidebar. Just click on it if you'd like to learn more or sign up to join the mysterious fun!

Furry Friday

On January 1st of each year we (usually) do lots of cleaning around here to start the New Year off sparkling and dust-free. Now to see how long we can keep it this way! One of the other things we do is our rotate our mattress. Does anyone else actually do this? I have no idea whether it really helps, but we do it anyway. We leaned the mattress up against the wall so i could vacuum the bed frame and i turned around a few minutes later to find:

They spent much of the day napping atop Mt. Mattress and occasionally peering out from their slumber to take in the landscape of their empire (including their house servants..ahem) from this new point of view.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

xo,

kate

New Goodies

Yesterday, i was thinking i should probably get a blog post ready to let you know about some fun new stationery items that will be arriving in Michaels Craft Stores® any day now. I'm really excited to share that the items feature some of the prints from Central Park. Fun!

So i started to snap some photos when...ding...an email came in from facebook® alerting me to a new photo someone had posted on my page. When i clicked to have a peek, i was surprised and tickled to see that Jodie of Simply Kids Ocala had beaten me to it! She spotted the goodies at her Michaels store the other day. Thanks for letting me know, Jodie. So, without further ado..here's a sampling of what you might find:

Spiral notepads, magnetic list pads, chubby pens, cute epoxy clothespins, mini paper clipboards with notepads and rubber stamps. They can be found in the big tower baskets so you might have to dig around a bit, but no matter what you'll come up with a handful of bright color and the promise of an early spring!

Meteors and Colored Pencils

Well, we did it. We set the alarm clock for 3 a.m. When it went off at that godforsaken hour, i could tell that we were both clinging to the blankets as long as we possibly could. But we pried ourselves out of the warm comfort, bundled up and took a very freezing cold walk into our back yard. It was windy and only about 6 degrees and didn't take long before my eyes started to water. It felt like the smeared tears were freezing to my cheeks, but i kept wiping them away with mittened fingers so i wouldn't miss any of the celestial display that we were craning our necks to see (and hoping we were looking in the right direction). The winter sky is so big...and our ability to identify constellations was, well, questionable.

Here's a picture i took just for you:

What did you expect?? It was 3AM!

But then...whooosh! A bright streaming white meteor whizzed across the Little Dipper in a flash. Or was it the Big Dipper? It was so fast and beautiful — but so so cold. We waited. And waited. They said the meteors from the Quadrantid constellation would fall at about one per minute, but we kept waiting and looking in all directions. I was sure that whichever way my head was facing, the meteors would be showering down by the hundreds right behind me. I'll never know. Pete went back to bed and i stayed outside for another 20 minutes. Just before 4 a.m. i saw two more meteors before losing all feeling in my chin, fingers and feet. So i went back to bed, too. And then the alarm clock went off again...way too soon and my feet were still freezing. I think we will do what some wise commenters have suggested: wait for the Perseids in August!

Staying inside with the colored pencils today, and thought you might enjoy this stellar starburst of creativity and color. Grab a cup of hot tea and enjoy!

copyright © hudsonmusicvids

PS: if you're interested, here's a behind the scenes peek at some of went into making this short video! amazing how creative people are.

Fresh

Happy New Year! Hope everyone is off to a wonderful beginning to 2012. I've cleared off my bulletin boards, erased my memo boards, filed paperwork, cleaned off my desk, sharpened my colored pencils and am ready to start designing. It feels so good especially because 2011 ended in a splashing bellyflop when all efforts to maintain balance between work and everything else...in a word...flopped. But without rehashing all that was, let's look forward to all the possibilities for making this a fulfilling year. I know i've got some new plans, new goals, new things to learn and another chance to strive for balance. So far, so good.

I always love to begin the year with a bouquet of fresh flowers to brighten the first days of January with their beauty and sweet fragrance. Apparently Franny seems to like this tradition as well.

How do you begin your year?

Oh! And for any brave souls who are so inclined to face the winter chill...there is going to be a spectacular (or so they say) meteor shower early early tomorrow morning. To read more about it and to know when to set your alarm clocks, click here. We might just be kookoo enough to try to catch a glimpse. Hoping for clear skies!