No Coast Craft-o-Rama on Friday and Saturday!

The No Coast Craft-o-Rama is this Friday and Saturday. All you Minneapolis / St. Paul peeps, I'd love to see you there! Friday the hours are 3pm - 8pm, and on Saturday it's open from 8am - 5pm. It's located at the amazing Midtown Global Market (where they have food vendors making yums from all over the world). There are so many great vendors there. I'm sure I'm not going to have any problem getting all my Holiday shopping done all at once. Yay!

Free Thankgiving Name Cards

Hi all! Thanksgiving is nearly here! The hubs and I did all of our shopping yesterday and are ready to make a feast fit for, well, 3 people (the hubs, his brother and me). We actually had our big family Thanksgiving meal 2 weeks ago because that's when all of my family could get together. It was super fun to see everyone and we all had a fantastic time and ate up all of Mom's amazing food. Here at Penguin & Fish, we made cute name cards for the occasion and we wanted to share them with you for free! We shared them in this week's newsletter viewable here. Click the link in the newsletter to download the PDF file to your desktop or downloads folder. Print, cut, fold and presto! you'll have cute new fall decor for the big feast! And make sure to click the subscribe button in the newsletter page to be in on future freebies.

Have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Hi all. I'm super excited to share with you that I have a block in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine. It even says Penguin & Fish on the cover and my block is on the contents page, woot! The magazine will be on shelves on May 8th. My block is a paper pieced elephant like the elephant in our Safari Sweet collection. It was my first time paper piecing and I can't wait to do it again. Paper piecing allows you to make super fancy blocks really easily. So fun! I'd thought I share a few pics.

And...Quiltmaker will be giving away a free mag here on the blog. Leave a comment below if you'd like a chance to win! I'll be choosing someone randomly this weekend. And be sure to check out the Quiltmaker site to see more of the designs and designers.

Sleepy Kitty Dreams now available

My little kitty is now available as art and canvas prints, iphone cases, ipad and laptop skins, t-shirts, and greeting cards all over at society6. The prints would be so cute in a little kid's room, and who doesn't need an iphone case with a kitty on it? Check'm out here.

Picnic Pals fabric collection

Hi all. Here's a quick glimpse of my new fabric line Picnic Pals. I'm really excited about the super bright summery colors. The fabric will be shipping to stores in July so make sure to tell your favorite local quilt shop that you'd like them to get some for you! The free pattern to make the rainbow quilt will be available in July as well. I couldn't wait to share it even though I know it's a couple months out yet. I can't wait to make one for myself, it'd be perfect for a picnic blanket. Remember, Picnic Pals iphone cases and ipad skins are available now over at society6, yay!

Kitty doodle

Another attempt at Photoshop doodling.

iphone case in Mollie Makes magazine

Mollie Makes magazine recently did a little article about the Society6 website and featured my "Owl in Ferns" iphone case! Yay! I recently uploaded some more iphone cases, ipad skins, and art prints to Society6 and thought I'd share them with you. Check'm out here. By the way...Society6 is offering free shipping through Sunday!

Random doodle

Here's a random doodle fer ya. I downloaded the pencil Photoshop brushes from the Stumpy Pencil blog. I had so much fun playing around with them. The brushes do feel like you're drawing with a pencil! Check out the Stumpy Pencil blog here.

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.