We Love French Knots

Hi all. Now that International Quilt Market is over, I'm attempting to get back on track with blogging again. One of the things that I missed telling you about was that in September Penguin & Fish was interviewed on the We Love French Knots blog run by the lovely Bari J! I designed a free pattern download of a little squirrel for the blog as well. The squirrels are going CRAZY outside right now prepping for the winter so I thought it was an appropriate time to share this little pattern again. Here is a link to We Love French Knots, please check it out! And here is a link to download the free squirrel embroidery pattern.

Fall Quilt Market 2011

Hi all! I'm back from Fall 2011 International Quilt Market. Quilt Market is a trade show for quilt shops and the rest of the industry to come on down and see what's new. There is one held in Spring and one in Fall. This was my fourth one, I can't believe it! I'm exhausted and could sleep for a week! It was an excellent show and I got to meet a ton of great peeps. Wasn't able to leave the booth very often, so I don't have many pics from the show, but I thought I'd share a couple from my booth. We hung Safari Sweet all over the walls. I think my favorite thing is all the little Safari Sweet plushies we made. I love the little alligator that's chilling with the big hedgehog. Silly. That's me in the booth in the first pic. That's only the first day and I looked tired already. On the wall with all the embroidery kits, you may spy some new little fellas. We now have the Giraffe, Jellyfish, Zebra and Alligator as kits! They're not up in the shop yet, but they will be soon. And all the patterns and kits now have iron-on transfers included, Yay!

Let's MEET and play with Safari SWEET!

Hi all. I have exciting news. My first fabric collection, Safari Sweet, IS NOW IN STORES! Yay! To celebrate, the lovely Nikol from Sewtropolis in Minneapolis, and I are having an embroidery get together on Saturday. We'll be stitching up little embroidered animal brooches like the one above. It's a super fun project and is especially good for kids or if you've never embroidered or sewn before. At Sewtropolis you'll also get to see a whole bunch of fun projects that you can make with Safari Sweet, like the giraffe quilt. I'll also be signing my children's book, No Monster Here. So come by on Saturday, it'll be SUPER FUN!

Saturday, October 1
1:00 - 3:00pm
Sewtropolis
5 West Diamond Lake Road
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55419

Society6

Hi all. Have you checked out Society6 yet? It's a super fun community website where you can post artwork. Then people can purchase art prints, laptop skins, iphone cases and more all with the art on it. There is so much fun art posted there, I'm tempted to fill my studio wall with different art prints. I signed up for a Society6 account a long time ago but just uploaded my first piece today. It's my Owl in Ferns embroidery that I made a while back. I ordered myself an iphone case with it on. Can't wait for it to arrive! If you want one too, here's a link to my Society6 page.

My studio in STUDIOS mag!

My studio is in the Fall issue of STUDIOS Magazine, yay! Should be on newsstands soon!

Jean quilt progress

Thought I'd share how I spent my Saturday. I worked on my jean quilt! I started it a couple of months ago and spent the entire day on it today. It's a "log cabin" style quilt with gold woven wool squares surrounded by one inch strips made out of old jeans. The dark colors are the outside of the jeans and the the light colors are from the insides. To make it bigger you just keep adding strips around the outsides of all the squares. I'm hoping to make this into a queen sized quilt and I'm about half way there right now. Unfortunately I ran out of old jeans. Boo. I'll have to try and steal a few more pairs from the hubs, but until then this project is on hold.

Pile'o'gators

Finished making some alligators out of Safari Sweet!

Instagram love

So I decided to get on the Instagram bandwagon. Instagram is a fun app where you can make your photos transform into vintagey yummies. You can also share them with the Instagram and other social network communities. These are my first six pics. That dang squirrel keeps trying to get to the birdfeeder. He's made a few leaps but hasn't quite made it yet.

Stuffed

My Kitties and Unicorns were in Stuffed magazine. Yay! I'm so happy to be among so many great plush artists. Stuffed is available at bookstores and check out more pages here.

I made a Kitty and Yarn

Sheesh, it's been another long time since a post. I promise you it's because I've been working on some super fun (and time consuming) projects that I'll be able to talk about soon. Just thought I'd share with you some recent fun stuff. I completed a custom kitty of the lovely Chloe. I don't do these very often, but when I do they end up being really fun for me. I love being able to add all the extra details that I don't do with my normal kitties.
And the other little project is...I made yarn! It was my birthday last week (31 eek!) and the hubs and I stopped by the Minnesota Textile Center to check out the gallery. The Textile Center is also the home of the Weaver's Guild of Minnesota and they had their store open when we were there. They had a gorgeous wall full of beautiful yarn on cones just waiting to be woven into fabric. They also had books and some kits. I purchased a Spindle Kit that came with some poofs of wool and a spindle made from an old cd. I've seen people with their spindles online making all sorts of yarn and I've been wanting to give it a try too, so I was just squealing when I saw the kit. When I got home I gave the spindle a try and found that it definitely got some getting used to. You almost need a third hand to man the spinning while your other hands work on putting the wool together. I have a new appreciation for all the spinners out there. It wasn't until I was done that I realized that I had been spinning the yarn way to tightly so when I made it into a ball I had to unwind the yarn a ton. Gah. All in all spinning was fun. Not sure I'll be doing much more of it (it was kind of hard on the wrists) but I got to learn a new thing and I probably won't obsess about it much longer. Now I'll just obsess about the wall of yarn back at the Weaver's Guild.

Quilt Market prep

Hi folks. I've been in Quilt Market preparations for a while now. I'll be off to Salt Lake City on Wednesday to start setting up my trade show booth. Eeek! I'm really excited. Right now I'm putting the finishing touches on everything. Above is a little iphone pic of my studio from about a week and a half ago. I was stitching a new big lion pillow. It's so much fun to stitch these animals at the larger size.

My bunny is in Small Magazine!

I'm a couple of days late with this post, but I'm still super excited. My bunny muff was photographed for small magazine! Small has the BEST photography of kid's fashion and it's worth a look if you haven't checked it out. I'm so happy my little plush friend could be a part of it.

Book review: Big Little FELT Universe

Remember this post I did a while back about Jeanette Lim of Ume Crafts. Well she's turned her amazing felt creations into a book! Check out the beautifully designed Big Little Felt Universe: Sew It, Stuff It, Squeeze It, Fun!



I was struck immediately by how many projects were in the book, over 70! Jeanette has so many clever techniques. I love the frosting edges on the cake above. On the banana you can put magnets on the inside so that the two banana slices connect to make a whole banana. Then you can cut the banana in half with your felt knife and felt cutting board. Too funny. One of Jeanette's main techniques is to use posterboard as a stabilizer. You basically make the shape of your felt object out of the posterboard and then sew your felt around the posterboard frame. I can see how this would really help the plush keep their shape. It's a new technique to me and one I definitely want to try.

Another thing I love about the book is that the templates are right after the project. You don't have to search for them in the back of the book. Yay!




The project I want to make the most is the potted bamboo. I have tons of felt lying around, I just need the time to make it (maybe after Quilt Market). The plants are actually separate from the pots, so you can pretend that you're planting your little cactus or African violet. I'll be sure to post some pics of the bamboo once I finish it. Check out Jeanette's etsy store here and check out the book here on amazon.

Artist: Myko Bocek Studios

I've been staring at this little puffball owl for weeks now. Isn't he the cutest! All of these wooly pom pom characters are by Myko of Myko Bocek Studios. Check out more of her creations in her etsy store, facebook and blog. She has tons of Easter/Spring cuties in the store right now. How fun!

Crows are back

The sun is out, the sky is blue and the last bits of snow are melting. It's spring! The neighborhood crows are out and starting to bring their meals to the bird bath. They perch on the edge and dip their stray crackers and hamburger buns into the water before they eat them. I got to see one do this for the first time today since last fall, and I'm taking that as a sign that winter is finally over. Yay! Here's my little sketch of the happy bird.

Hoop Up 2 swap

Hi all. I thought I'd share a project that I worked on during my hiatus from blog land over the holidays.

While scanning my Twitter last summer I found out that John (Quilt Dad) was going to have a "Hoop Up 2" embroidery swap. I thought the swap would be a fun way to make some new embroideries and meet some new peeps so I signed up. The way the swap worked was everyone would be placed into a group of about 5 people. Each person in the group comes up with their own theme for an embroidery. After everyone shares their theme, each person has to stitch an embroidery for every other swap partner in their group based on that partner's theme.

The theme that I chose was "Pretty Pets in Pretty Borders". I made a sample of my theme to share with the others in my group. You can see my process of the sample piece for my theme here and here. Above are pics of the embroideries I did based on my partner's themes. The "Owl in Laurel" is for John's (Quilt Dad) "whimsical woodland" theme. Lim's Cafe is for Amy's (badskirt) "retro or silly sign" theme. The Etch-a-Sketch is for Jill's (spinster sister) "Text + ?" theme, where Jill wanted us to have text plus something else in our embroideries. And the final piece is for Cara's (quiltnookgal) "Bluebirds with Tea" theme. I had such a good time stitching everyone's piece and it was a fun challenge to work within someone else's theme. Once I receive all my "Pretty Pets in Pretty Borders" from my group partners, I'll be sure to take some pics and share them. I'm so excited to see how they all turned out!

Another exciting thing about the swap was that it allowed me to develop my iron-on transfer Puppy embroidery patterns. I love when work and play collide!