The Last Piece

Craftsy Classes!

Oh it's been a delicious little secret for so long but now I can finally tell you! I've been in Denver...

 

....filming my Craftsy classes!! Wow it's hard work talking with no script to a camera for what will eventually be about 6 or 7 hours of classes, but I have had SO much fun I can't tell you. The team at Craftsy are just the most awesome group of people, it's an incredible, professional place to work and best of all, we have filmed such a fun, technichal and brain stretching group of classes for you I am so excited!

Here is a slightly blurry pic of my crew on the set. Hi and thanks for being so awesome Ivana, James, Justin, Danica and most of all, Alissa! Oh dear look at my double chin, no more tasty fries with chilli on them for you while you're in the US missy!

If you don't know about Craftsy, they are an online platform of downloadable classes on all sorts of things - obviously my classes are about quilting! The great thing about them is that there are a few free classes you can enroll in to try out the format, and then you can jump right in and do some awesome classes with some great instructors - the latest quilting one is with Weeks Ringle, and if you don't know who Weeks is then you need to enroll in this class NOW and also buy her book The Modern Quilts Sourcebook which I personally think is completely awesome. She and her husband Bill Kerr have been making "modern quilts" before there was ever any of this Modern Quilt Guild hoo-ha going on, and doing it so WELL. 

But I digress. Before you get too excited and run over to Craftsy to enroll in my class, it's not there yet - the aforementioned amazing team are working on it right now to edit out all the bits where I made no sense and make it into a group of awesome classes for you. It will be ready in about a month and I promise I will tell you as soon as it is. Yay!

On to Houston for Market today, can't WAIT to see everyone and to give the adorable Miss Amy her long awaited quilt. Have a great day everyone, I know I will :)

iSew Academy

Have you heard of the iSew Academy? It's the brand new iPad and iPhone app (you download it from the App Store) where you can download video tutorials on sewing and quilting. And you can print the patterns out to make projects at home. The app is only new but already they have some free of fantastic free tutorials and sew-alongs going on so you can try the app out, as well of loads of classes you can take.

The app is set up like an English private school - think Hogwarts but with sewing magic :) They have prefects and Houses and House Captains - and the exciting news is that I am going to be their Quilting Captain! What does that mean? Well soon you'll be able to download a whole bunch of video classes with me right onto your iPad. Look out sewing rooms, here I come!

So if you'll be at Houston for Quilt Market, head on over to stand 1569 to see the Head Girls, Louise and Belinda and the rest of the team.

I'll be there wearing my school blazer (!!) at 11.30 every day to say howdy - we will be doing a book signing on Saturday and Sunday as well as a giveaway of a copy of Quilting From Little Things and a St Ives Fat Quarter pack on Sunday.

You can have your photo taken in the photo booth, find out all about the app and get some Aussie lollies as well as say hi! It's a win win situation :)

If you're not going to Houston, check out the girls at iSew Academy at their blog, on Facebook or on Twitter. 

Aurifil Block of the Month

YES! It's Aurifil Block of the Month time and this month the gorgeous block is provided by the Lovely Mrs. PorkChop, aka Amanda Woodward-Jennings!

Yep - Halloween!!

Amanda is the co-owner of the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery Her block is too freakin' cute, hop over and download it right now. Don't forget to check out Amanda's blog and say howdy, she is a sweetie pie and if you haven't visited her blog before you will enjoy the experience.

Over on the Flickr group meanwhile, I can't believe all the amazing Summer blocks from my design that are popping up! Here are a few:

There are loads more, make sure you go and have a look. I love all the personal touches everyone has been adding to their blocks. There are quite a few pics where people have finished all 9 months and put them together - they look so great! And don't forget that if you make a block and post it to the Flickr site, you go into the running to win fantastic prizes every month.

I could go on for quite a while about how much I am loving appliquing with Aurifil's Mako 50 weight right now... I'm working on a project with a lot of Liberty, Kaffe and various other pretties, and the colours are just so very perfect for the fabric I'm using, and the Mako is so FINE - it just disappears into the fabric like magic. Love it, But I think this is my favourite colour:

 

Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop

So - Laura and Katy are going on a road trip around the US - they're visiting Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

The idea is that they will sew as they go and blog about the projects they stitch, inspired by the amazing sceney and colours of the midwest. They've invited some others to play along with a pic of somewhere they've been to recently, and an EPP project inspired by the colours of the photo! So of course the first thing I thought of was my trip to Africa. 

Here are my brother and I standing on the banks of a river full of hippo. The problem with Africa is that the palette is kind of the same no matter where you look - beautiful, but kind of brown and green! So i looked at this pic from Lake Tanganika, the world's largest fresh water lake:

Which gave me this palette, which I made using the palette builder tool at Play Craft. 

Which I love! But then I decided that was really cheating a bit and I should have a proper African palette. So I used this pic instead, which is one of my favourites from the trip. We drove up over a hill, and the sun was going down - and suddenly all these giraffes popped their heads up all ot once. They looked so funny.

Much more an accurate representation of Africa, don't you think?

So here's the palette. I've spent this morning picking out some fabrics to make a block with:

I wanted to get something slightly tribal and organic looking, as well as some texture, some spots for the giraffes. I'm quite pleased with what's I've got picked out.

But...... I have to admit that my head has been so full of cotton wool getting ready for my own trip to the USA in two weeks (I'm going to Denver and then to Houston!), that I forgot to make a block!! I get a black mark against my name, I know. Bad Sarah. To redeem myself I will sew the block up tonight and blog tomorrow, please check back to see what I did :) 

Join in with the blog hop and sew along - there are some amazing prizes and offers to be had along the way from sponsors including Pink Castle Fabrics, Paper Pieces (they are offering a coupon code for 20% off using PAPER20 on checkout) and Aurifil Check out the details now and join in!!!

Off to stitch.