The Last Piece

It's a Pattern Parade!

When Amy Barickman at Indygo Junction asked me if I wanted to play along for her Pattern Parade, I was thrilled! I met Amy at Quilt Market last year and she is just as lovely as she looks. 

Don't know about Indygo Junction OR Amy Barickman? Well why not? Here's a little bio...

Indygo Junction Inc., founded by creative entrepreneur Amy Barickman, is an established sewing and crafts business that offers stylish and timeless high-quality patterns and a variety of idea-rich project books. Amy continues to work with artists and designers from around the world to create unique projects, having sold over 2 million books and sewing patterns. 

With a fresh, fashion-forward style, IndygoJunction.com connects creative enthusiasts of all ages. LIKE us on Facebook to receive a free ePattern PDF & sign up for our eNewsletter for a free eBook featuring a purse pattern, embroidery design and small quilt. 

 

There she is. Isn't she cute?

For today's stop on the tour, I'm going to show you this groovy Urban Tote purse pattern. Now, I had every intention of being a Very Good Girl and making this bag up - I even had a funky orphan block all ready to show off in the middle, like this:

- however clearly I am a Very Naughty Girl and haven't done that. What I HAVE done is to read the pattern through closely, so I can tell you how easy this bag is to put together. The instructions are so clear and easy to follow. I am SO not the bag maker, but I think even I could make this one up! Plus you've got the added bonus of being able to show off a block, some embroidery of a favourite piece of fabric in the centre panel.

The bag has a sturdy frame and a wide mouth so you can stuff it full of all that shizzle we all carry around with us. It would make an awesome craft tote too. And it has plenty of discreet pockets on the sides and and inside too for even more storage space. You can finish it off with fun hardware to add make the bag your own. 

Want to make it? I bet you do, 'cause I know I did! Well guess what, you can win a copy of the pattern: 

AND also this extra gorgeous Michael Miller fabric to make it!

To enter you can simply leave a comment on this post letting me know what you would put in the centre panel of the bag. Please make sure to leave an email address so I can contact you, or I will have to redraw the giveaway. The winner will be selected by random draw next Friday, June 22 at 5pm AEST.

As an extra surprise, you can collect a secret letter each day from all the blogs on the tour - my blog's letter is 

That's right, "V". Which stands for Very Very Nice if You Win. Because at the end of the tour, you can unscramble all the letters you collected to create the mystery phrase, then enter it at the Indygo Junction blog to win the Grand Prize. Woohoo!

And guess what else? You don't even have to win the giveaway to get a little giftie - as a special gift to Last Piece readers, Indygo Junction is giving you all a coupon for 20% off your next IndygoJunction.com order. Your code is PPBT4 and it expires at the end of the blog tour on July 13^th.

Make sure and follow along to see what everyone else gets up to!

June 6 – Indygo Junction Kick-Off Post 

June 9th - Nancy Zieman Blog 

June 11 - Sew Much Ado 

June 13 - Designs in Machine Embroidery 

June 15 - The Last Piece

June 18 - Lazy Girl 

June 20 - Sew Weekly 

June 22 - Tula Pink 

June 26 - Sew Mama Sew

June 28 - Mama Said Sew 

July 2 – Skip to my Lou 

July 6 - Indygo Junction Tour Finale

 

 

I am not AWOL from the Aurifil BOM!

I've been a bit naughty with my BOM posts so I have to apologise - the travelling and the blogging and the writing and the looking after of the kids sometimes over laps into chaos :) HOWEVER! If you missed the May Block of the Month please do go and check it out - Anna from Thimbleanna did the sweetest little Maypole block. If you click the link you can hop on over and read all about Anna and what makes her tick.

And this month is my lovely friend Pam from Pam Kitty Morning! If you don't know Pam already, you should. Pam's been blogging since blogs were invented just about, and she's always full of fun stuff and pretty pictures with red polka dots in them. Plus she designs the cutest fabric!

Pam's BOM block is just like her, sunny and sweet. 

Have you been following along with this Block of the Month program? If you haven't, it's not too late - you can still get all of the embroidery patterns and thread colours from the Aurifil blog, and if you want to see what everyone has been doing with the patterns, there's a Flickr page!

If you DO make one or more of the blocks, make SURE to post them to Flickr - Pat draws a prize every month from the blocks that are made, and you could win some yummy Aurifil! And plus, next months block is ME so I expect you to all get stitching and show me what you can do with it! It's a funky little Summertime block, which I know is a bit out of season for all you Aussies and Kiwis but just think, you can stitch one up and get the jump on the season :)

Stitch on ladies!

Bloggers Block of the Month

Hey all! Don't forget to stop in at this months delightful stop on the tour. Amy from Mrs Schmenkman Quilts is the hostess with the mostest this month, and brings you the tutorial for this block: 

So cute! For links to the other blocks so far in the series, you can go see Jaquie at Canton Village Quiltworks. Other designers on the tour include

September - Sherri McConnell – A Quilting Life

October - Vicki Welsh – Field Trips in Fiber

November - Stephanie Dunphy – Loft Creations

December - Pat Sloan – The Voice Of Quilting

January - John Adams – Quilt Dad

February - Amy Smart – Diary of a Quilter

March - Allison Harris – Cluck, Cluck, Sew

April - Amy Lobsiger – Mrs. Schmenkmen Quilts THIS MONTH

May - Cathy Underhill – Cabbage Quilts

June - Pam Vieira-McGinnis – Pam Kitty Morning

July - Victoria Findlay Wolfe – Bumble Beans Inc.

August - Amy Ellis – Amy’s Creative Side

September - Sarah Fielke – The Last Piece ITS ME!

October - Jackie Kunkel – Canton Village Quilt Works 

Have fun everyone :)

Quilts! Quilts!

**Feel free to pin my images, but please be cool and link back! Thanks :) **

So many classes lately! And more to come. If you're wanting to see me I'm in Melbourne next week - my class at Amitie is full but I am doing a show and tell night and you can still get into that. I'm at The Patchwork Orange in Orange NSW the week after that, and in Toowoomba at Precious Time the week after that - and in New Zealand in May!! If you want more details on the classes feel free to email me and ask, otherwise contact the shops (details in the sidebar inder EVENTS) and book yourself right in.

Classes in Sydney meanwhile are chugging along. Here's a selection:

Sue has been appliquing a quilt from Fons and Porters book, Quilts From the Henry Ford, one of my all time favourite quilt books. I love her bold colours, we had fun picking them out.

Sam is sewing 1" hexies into a rainbow. She's a few rounds out but basically we're going red and yellow and pink and green... purple and orange and blue... singing a rainbow, and wait until you see the stars she's made for the corners. 

Little Miss Ella popped into Wednesday night class a few weeks ago with her mum to learn how to hand quilt. She made this quilt top herself, and spent the night happily stitching, and doing a lovely job of it too. Hooray for Ella!

All the quilts in the following posts are from my patterns. You can contact me for purchase information.

Down at Cottage Quiltworks there's fantastic quilts coming out our ears. Emma is making a little version of Candy Shop as a runner for the end of her daughter's bed. 

Rebecca is making A Sandwich Short of a Picnic is soft colours for her little daughter.

And Liz is making Flock Together - wow look at those colours! This is going to be gorgeous.

Another wonderful Stars in Your Eyes quilt is underway here:

I love this pattern - it's a little tricky to get together but the results are so worth it. I love seeing all the different versions going on around the place! Here's one made by Jenni - not a student, but an online friend :)

Love that border!

Margaret has been making Sandwich too - this one is for a teenage boy, and don't the colours look bold. Love it.

I dropped into my devine friend Flo's shop (Plue au Vent in Greenwich) the other day for a late afternoon Friday champagne and brie on the sidewalk :) If you haven't been to Flo's shop and you're in Sydney, get yourself over there and check it out. Such beautiful things and such great taste. AND she has old quilt tops!! Run, don't walk. On display at the moment is her version of my Bless You quilt - doesn't it look great?

Between the teaching, lots of stitching... hope you're all getting lots of stitching in too. Leaving you with two blogs to read - check out Thomas's blog on copyright for some very sensible answers to the MANY (and I mean many) queries and panics I've been getting about the Kate Spain/Emily Ceir situation - Thomas explains where you stand with regards to using printed fabric clearly and sensibly in this post. I've refrained from blogging about this because I didn't want to get in the middle of it - however I think Thomas has said everything I wanted to say!

And after you've checked THAT out, hop on over to the Cottage Quiltworks new blog - all the latest fabrics and pics from all their teacher's classes - including mine! Happy Wednesday....

Aurifil Designer of the Month

Howdy all! Here's a fantastic program I'm involved with this year for you to check out. The Aurifil Designer of the Month is a whole bunch of awesome designers making a block each every month for you all to make and play along! AND those generous peeps at Aurifil are giving away amazing prizes as well to make all that stitching even more enjoyable. 

All the designers will be stitching with gorgeous Aurifil Lana or 12 wt and using Sassy by Moda as our feature fabric. This line is new for Fall 2011 so you should be able to find it at your local or online.

January's block was made by Roseann Kermes, you can read all about her here! And this is her gorgous block.

Rosann used Aurifil 12wt for this project, here are her colours:

2260 – red
2692 – Black
2975 – dark gold
4182 – turquoise
4663 – variegated turquoise
4671 – variegated brown
5006 – lt turquoise

Cute huh? I'm going to have to get myself organised and decide what colours I'm going to stitch in - after all you can't be involved in something like this and not make all the beautiful blocks too can you??

You can hop on over to the Flickr group to see what everyone has been up to. There is a prize to be won EVERY month, and everyone who doesn't win goes into the draw for all the other months too, so you have heaps of chances to win. Make sure and get a block posted asap because the January prize will go off soon and not many people have their blocks finished! 

AND tomorrow I'm going to update you on the other awesome program I'm playing in this year, the Bloggers Block of the Month which is run through Canton Village Quiltworks. I've almost gotten all my blocks up to date and I'm ready to share! See you tomorrow...

QuiltAlbum

Here's a fun gadget for you all. Do you know about QuiltAlbum? It's a piece of software that my friend Pat Sloan has put together for you to document the quilts that you make. 

It is basically like a photo album stored in your computer. You can put a pic of your quilt, all the info about how it was made, who or what it was made for, what batting you used, how you quilted it.... here's an example I did this morning with one of my Dollies Online quilts. 

This seriously took me about 4 minutes, even though I have never used the software before. It's really easy and you can just drag and drop pics of your quilts in, you don't have to wait for them to upload.

The cool thing about it is that once your quilts are in the system, you can use them for other things. The program has a bunch of templates you can use to print off album pages, make address labels for postage and your own quilt labels for the back of your quilts, and even greeting cards. I thought it would be fun to have a card to slip into packages when I post purchases to customers - here's what I knocked up in about 2 minutes.

 Too fun! The software is $29.95 but it's the kind of things you will add to over years and you will have created a memory of all the quilts you made and gave away :) Go and check it out!