UPDATE... and what's with Rick Springfield's suit?

Before we start I have to take a moment and give a shout out to Stephanie from @simplesewendipity who BLEW MY MIND! And then I saw her flimsy! And then I saw it all quilted up! I've made my share of cassettes in my time but Stephanie made made 28! 28 Rainbow cassettes to border her Boombox quilt! UNBELIEVABLE! Love, love, love!

...Here's the latest UPDATE: I'm not sure where the time goes. And why does everything seem to happen all at the same time? Here's my best way to organize it:

SECRET SEWING: Postponed. Do you remember a few weeks back when I told you I'd be able to reveal my secret designing at the end of the month? We're going to have to hold on just a bit longer. Oh and to really make it titillating, I've recently been working on a second secret sewing project (dream project actually!... now that I think of it they're all dream projects)! Gosh, I'm so grateful for the things that have landed in my lap. Thank you universe, I sure appreciate it!

UP COMING TRUNK SHOWS, WORKSHOPS AND SHOWS: 

  • MINI TRUNK SHOW: Monday, April 16th for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. I'm going to do my best Brene Brown inspired talk (gosh I love her!). Do you know her work about vulnerability? I'm going to open up and be really candid about my work and my journey on how I accidentally on purpose became a sewing pattern designer. 

  • SHOW: VMQG Quilt Showcase. Saturday and Sunday, August 25th and 26th at the Pipe Shop (115 Victory Ship Way, North Vancouver). They put on a show two years ago (it was my very first Newsletter post on this site. You can see it HERE). It was fresh, modern and inspired. I was thrilled to have work in it last time and I'm super excited to enter work for this one too!

UPDATES ABOUT PAST INTERVIEW SERIES PARTICIPANTS (wow, that sounds so official, doesn't?!):

NATALIE SANTINI : : from NOV 2017 INTERVIEW SERIES PART 1 / PART 2 : : Recently was on episode 158 of Modern Sewciety Podcast. You can listen to it HERE. It's the next BEST thing to hanging out with her in person! She always brightens my day! Oooh and she also has a new messenger bag pattern coming out soon too. Be on the look out!

JENNY HAYNES : : from JAN 2018 INTERVIEW SERIES PART 1 / PART 2 exhibition at @artyfactgallery is up and it's a SMASH HIT! Join me in a hip hip hooray for her!

... and lastly...RECOMMENCED FOR YOUR PLAYLIST: Two song this week. A call and response if you will. Ready?... Rick Springfield's JESSIE'S GIRL (quick question Rick, why the suit?! and isn't smashing the mirror a bit extreme? It does crack me up though!) and the Car's MY BEST FRIENDS GIRLFRIEND with a lovely intro appearance by Alice Cooper! 

 

WHY I HEART THE MQG AND THEIR NEW BOOK! : : PLUS A BLOG HOP : :

Where to begin? In art school I so badly longed to be part of a movement. Like impressionism or cubism but all those ships had sailed. I have always LOVED fabric but it was a well kept secret through my art education. It was well... girly, not big (as in scale) and too colourful (another big no, no). Fast forward to the year 2000. One of the gifts of having my first son other than intense nesting fever, I made several baby quilts (including one where I hand painted the fabric). He didn't sleep much (err, I know that doesn't sound like a perk) so my life whittled down to what I had time for. If I was going to use my precious time it had to be doing something I really, REALLY loved to do. So long horror films! My husband loves you but I've been faking it this whole time! I started to really embrace things I loved/needed to do. I still wasn't quilting yet but I had started buying fabric, making kick ass Halloween costumes and taking the odd printing workshop here and there.

Fast forward to 2010. New to Twitter I had seen this little tweet about the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild starting up. This tweet changed my life and put me on a trajectory that landed me here. I had very little knowledge of what The Modern Quilt Guild was. All I knew was that I wanted to be part of it so bad I could taste it! I couldn't even put into words what modern quilting was but I knew it when I saw it. And I LOVED everything I saw. E V E R Y T H I N G. It was a movement. YES! Fist Pump!

I went to that first VMQG meeting and then quickly co-founded the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild. With very little experience I started sewing every challenge, sewing in quilt bees and took every workshop I could. That first year I made 12 quilts! I was so in love with the movement that this shy girl went to a LAMQG meeting... by herself! I'm not sure where the courage came from but a big perk was meeting Latifah Saafir. I remember her telling me about this idea they had, which became Quiltcon! (Side note: are you going in 2018? ME TOO! I just decided. High five!)

Fast forward to November 2016. After my Cassette Tape quilt had been accepted the year before I thought I'd like to expand on that idea with another design. I research A LOT before I start a project and when I came across the old movie poster of John Cusack from Say Anything holding his Boombox over his head... everything kind of fell into place. I posted on Instagram as I made the Say Anything quilt. It was an intense month but people were so generous in cheering me on. Gosh I love that November 30th deadline. (Shout out to @mscattergood for mocking up my boombox over John Cusacks head!)

I was thrilled when Say Anything was accepted into Quiltcon! And I was doubly thrilled when I received an email invitation for it to be a part of a book by the MQG, Modern Quilts: Designs of the New Century. M I N D B L O W N .

I've seen the list of quilters included and, understanding this is totally cliche, I'm humbled. There's just no other good way to say it. I mean, my heroes are in there. And then! My quilt will be joining the Museum tour! The location details can be found HERE.

It's been an incredible year but the party doesn't stop here! We're celebrating with a blog hop! So many great blogs, quilts and people Have a look-see HERE. 

While you're checking that out, stay cozy over this winter holiday break okay! Again thank you for a wonderful 2017. I swear every time I saw a boombox being sewn I gasped with delight! Hugs all around. I'll see you in the new year. Until then I'll leave you with my favourite holiday song: FATHER CHRISTMAS by the KINKS! Warning once you listen to it you'll be singing it all day. My gift to you, wink! Wink!

 

VANCOUVER MODERN QUILT GUILD SHOWCASE August 27 - 28. 2016

It was like a breath of fresh air. Hung at the Shipyards in North Vancouver, this handsome place was perfect for VMQG's first show. Refreshingly, quilts were hung simply and without drape. Modern quilters often take great pleasure in designing the backs of their quilts. I overheard one woman say, " I don't know which is the back or the front, they're both so beautiful!" Plus I had to giggle a few times at how people's feet lined up with the quilts in my photos. Giggling and modern quilts. Totally. Allowed.

These photos are just a fraction of the show. The show was bursting with striking quilts. I arranged this gallery slideshow with the title cards before the quilts themselves (except mine and Amy Dame's). There were so many more quilts I wanted to include but realized after reviewing my photo's I seemed to have gotten trigger happy and at some point I stopped including the title cards... Yup, same thing happened to me at Quiltcon. Note to self: stay calm and title card on!

Amy Dame's quilt won the Canadian Quilter Association ribbon, voted on by the VMQG guild members. It was outstanding and was a no brainer it should have won. There's no title card but I included some close ups of her paper piecing. When I first saw her quilt I thought, "Huh. Stickers. Okay." Then I looked closer. Mind. Blown!

Also mind blowing was the organization of the show, the thought and care that went into it. Quilt shows are HUGE undertakings. Big hours of planning and prep are put into them, plus hanging them, manning them and taking them down (not to mention the security and returning the quilts).  As with all things of greatness, all that hard work that went into VMQG's show made it look easy breezy, fresh and beautiful.