Tie One On Blog Hop

WE HAVE A WINNER !   Molly used the Random Generator and out of 54 comments – it randomly selected Comment #4 – which is CONNIE LINDSTRAND – come on down – you are a winner and congratulations! 

And thank you to everyone who commented and played along!  So appreciate your support and continued kindness!  Woo hoo!

(Comments are now closed on this post….)
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Today is our day on the “Tie One On” blog hop – welcome!!

When designer Scott Hansen of Blue Nickel Studios, asked us to be part of his “Tie One On” blog hop, of course we said yes and were super excited.

First – There are giveaways so let’s get the very important ‘blog business’ on how to enter out of the way….Banyan Batiks is giving away an assortment of “Tie One On” batik bundles!  Yippee!  Also, Colourwerx will be sending our winner an assortment of our patterns, including our newest pattern called “Whirligig” which is featured here and will be debuting October 15th.

Here’s how to enter – just leave a comment below.  A winner will be randomly selected from the comment list below.  Hopefully you’ve been following along with my fellow bloggers each day since the blog hop started last Saturday.  If not,  be sure to go back and check their blogs (listed near the end of this blog post) because each stop on the blog hop is offering a giveaway, so that’s ten chances to win a prize, including on Scott’s blog!!   Now back to Scott and his debut batik fabric collection….

“Tie One On” is Scott’s new signature batik collection he designed for Banyan Batiks, a division of Northcott Fabrics.  Scott is the “mad color scientist” behind his company Blue Nickel Studios, and teaches each year at the famed Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show and Quilter’s Affaire in Sisters Oregon – a must see show each Summer for anyone who lives or is visiting the West Coast!   The motto of his company is “Urban Folk-Modern Design” – how could you not love that!  One of  my favorite patterns from Scott which is especially gorgeous in Kaffe Fassett fabrics and of course, on my bucket list,  is “Painted Forest”.  Love this!  You can purchase this pattern on his website here.

Carl and I met Scott last year near Spring Quilt Market when his new fabric collection was just debuting at Quilt Market to shop owners.  I made a few Mini Mod Dog samples for his booth that came out super cute! Here they are!   You can purchase the Mini ModDog Pattern here!     And you can read the inspiration behind Scott’s idea for designing “Tie One On” fabrics by clicking here – did you know it has nothing to do with drinking but with men’s neckties? – ha!

So it was decided – Whirligig named for the swirling offset quarter circles that look a bit unhinged, would be the perfect contemporary vehicle to showcase this color group and Scott’s new collection.  But which colors and which fabrics?? – so many good ones to choose from in his new collection. (click on the images below to see each colorway!)

Ventura

Sedona

Nashville

Manhattan

Ultimately I settled in on the Ventura color collection as it reminded of the candy “good and plenty’.  I love the fresh pearl and mint colors mixed with the bold blacks and bright magentas.  Very #colouricious indeed!!  And that black and magenta atomic starburst pattern is my absolute fave of all – it’s called ‘Stardust Hotel’. It’s a perfect match to our mid century modern Palm Springs vibe here in the desert!

Ventura

Once I received the eight fabrics from the very nice people at Northcott – I paired them into four groups and began cutting out my templates shapes.  First I needed to trace the template shapes using my trusty Frixion Iron Off Pen.   This makes tracing shapes so easy and guess what?  if you make a mistake, all you need to do is iron away your mistake – a win-win for me!

Next – the fun part – curvey quilting.  The key to sewing curves is to “hug the curve in order to love your curve!” Really!  Scant 1/4″ seams are where it’s at and hug the edge of the curve with the edge of your presser foot! And neato! – no pins needed with our pattern templates as the curve is gentle and we designed in extra seam allowance so you don’t have to be ‘Patty Perfect’.  (You’ll trim and square down after a block is assembled – yippee!)

Once all curved units were sewn, they were once again paired with their counterparts and sewn together to form blocks.  Blocks were squared and trimmed down and yes, you got it! sewn together to form half of the whirligig.  Two halves go together and with the designed offset to create that rather “unhinged” look –  you get a one big beautiful Whirligig block!   By switching the placements of the fabrics you get a totally different block…hence block “A” and block “B” !

Once you make six each of these block variations you are ready to assemble the top.  I quilted this on my APQS Lucey long arm using King Tut Variagated Thread in the Canaan color and the pantograph pattern Chinook by Urban Threads –  I think both the thread and the pantograph pattern are a perfect match to the Whirligig pattern and Scott’s “Tie One On” fabrics!  I love the way it came out.

“Whirligig” is a super fun pattern and a contemporary take on the traditional Drunkard’s Path block.  It’s also so easy to select fabrics for – just eight 1-yard cuts is all you need….first choose 4 distinct colors and then choose 2 fabrics in each colourway!  Eazy Peazy!  🙂 The pattern will be available shortly and if you like what you see (and we hope you do) you can preorder the pattern here on our Colourwerx website and save $2.00 – it will be ship on October 15th!

As for “Tie One On” fabrics, those are coming to a shop near you in October!  So start looking for them! Yea!!!

Tomorrow’s stop is Sheri Cifaldi-Morrill at Whole Circle Studio and I can’t wait to see what she has created!    And by the way –  here’s the list of my fellow bloggers….remember even though their day on the blog hop may have passed, the giveaway is still open, so go visit them and enter! And of course, be sure to visit Scott’s site at Blue Nickel Studios for giveaways too!

Saturday 9/22 – Teri Lucas                https://terificreations.com/
Sunday 9/23 – Robin Long              http://robinruthdesign.com/blog/
Monday 9/24 – Sue O’Very              https://sueoverydesigns.com/blog/
Tuesday 9/25 – Cheryl Arkison         http://www.cherylarkison.com/diningroomempire/
Wednesday 9/26 – Linda Sullivan (Me!!)          https://colourwerx.wordpress.com/
(tomorrow….)
Thursday 9/27 – Sheri Cifaldi-Morrill  http://blog.wholecirclestudio.com/
Friday 9/28 – Debby Brown          http://higheredhands.blogspot.com/
Saturday 9/29 – Blair Stocker           https://wisecrafthandmade.com/blog/
Sunday 9/30 – Kim Niedzwiecki       http://www.gogokim.com/

As for our giveaway, be sure to leave a comment below.  We’ll leave the contest open until Monday, October 1st and Molly, our office manager, will pick a winner on Tuesday, October 2nd.

Thanks for stopping by and until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

 

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…Just exactly what do you guys do?…

For the trade only – Quilt Market happens just twice a year and it is ‘the place’ to preview the newest fabrics, patterns and notions that will be arriving at your local quilt shop in the coming year.

Like most Quilt Markets it was exhausting but very energizing….  The ‘exhausting’ is in the designing, making and preparing all of our quilts for display, coming up with a new look for our Colourwerx booth (see below for a couple of snaps) , designing and printing handouts and brochures, and the final step – hoping that it all arrives (including us and the quilts) in one piece to the venue and on time.

The ‘energizing’ is actually just being there – being able to view and or try out the latest fabrics, notions and patterns, seeing a vast variety of quilts all made with different techniques and styles, and lastly and most importantly catching up with friends and colleagues and meeting new ones. Here were a few of our favorites:

Amy Butler’s Booth

Sew Many Creations’ Booth

Tula Pink’s Booth

We were also thrilled to see several of our ‘secret sewing’ designs hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric booth and Quilt Gallery.  ‘Secret sewing’ – meaning we were not able to reveal them to you until now because the fabric had not yet been released.

Which brings me to this important note:  We get asked alot “….just exactly what do you guys do….”  – well, aside from the obvious fact that we sell patterns for our original designs and make quilts (and we make alot of them!), we also design quilt patterns and make quilts for many well known fabric companies.  Hence, the term “secret sewing”.

For example, a new fabric collection is due to be released in the next 6-9 months but the fabric designer may be a well known painter or illustrator and know very little about quiltmaking…so that’s where we step in….we are contracted by the fabric company to take the fabric collection and design several patterns highlighting that collection…then we are asked to develop one or several of these designs further by writing a pattern and actually making the quilt for display – it is great fun but it is also ‘top secret stuff’ as we can’t reveal to you what we are up to until the collection is released.

Back to Spring Quilt Market, we designed and made five quilts that were on display at Spring Quilt Market, and these were fairly “top secret” until about 2 weeks prior to Spring Quilt Market.  Some of these designs had been in the works since January so it was mighty hard not to tell you what we were up to….

We’ll highlight these designs later but here’s a short preview of them hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric Gallery of Quilts.  And we must give credit to our dear friend Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss – she custom  quilted all of these and did just an absolutely fantastic job!  If you see a quilt you like, then jump on over to the Inspiration page on the the Free Spirit website to download the free pattern  – some of these are available now and some are coming in a few weeks or so, plus there are loads more free patterns there by other fellow designers that are super terrific, so check it out!

Mystic Gold

Hat Boxes

All Stacked Up

Easy Sunday

Racetrack

And finally –  Colourwerx (meaning Carl and I)  designed and debuted three new patterns which are now available at your local quilt shops – they are also available for purchase on our website!   PDF versions of these are in the works and should be available by the end of June!  (drum roll….) They are: ModCats, Mod TV and Mix It Up!  All are super fun patterns and incorporate the slash ‘n sew method we love!

All in all, a great time was had by all and now we’re turning our thoughts towards the Houston Quilt Market in October (yes, October already!)

Thank you to all for following along with us, and until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

Roundabout Quilt

Oh my – how time does fly!  Unbelievably, it’s the middle of March and we promised with our last blog post in January that we would talk more…our apologies but the good news is we have been super busy designing and quilting, designing and quilting, and designing and quilting and so on….the only problem with all this ‘designing and quilting’ is that it’s been “super secret quilting” so we haven’t been able to share any of it with you until now….

One of the first quilts we designed and made for Free Spirit Fabric was our ‘Roundabout’ Quilt using Nel Whatmore’s beautiful and cottage chic fabric collection called “Rosealea“.  This was a fun quilt to create but I must admit when a quilt sample was requested to be created for of all venues – the Houston Quilt Market! (gasp) – I was a little intimidated to say the least.  Here’s the completed quilt hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric Quilt Gallery which was a special booth exhibit at last year’s Houston Quilt Market – indeed a proud moment for Carl and I.

Designed solely by Carl, this quilt is almost entirely paper pieced, which allows for the perfect sharp points and intricate secondary designs to come forth – sometimes I wonder if he designs these complicated looking things just to test me!  Lol! Paper piecing is a love of mine so I welcomed the task!

In creating this quilt,  I discovered a few tips and tricks along the way.   First, the ever useful glue stick came in very handy. I ran a light bead of glue stick along the first fabric so that I could place the black and white dots evenly and perfectly vertical over the the first paper pieced section without the dots shifting as I sewed – skewed dots would look awful and I did not want that look!

I also used my very handy ‘Add a Quarter’ ruler to trim off any excess fabric leaving just that perfect scant 1/4″ seam allowance.  If you don’t have one of these ‘Add a Quarter’ rulers yet, run – don’t walk –  to your neighborhood quilt shop and pick one up – they are super useful for all paper piecing and just  a great handy notion to have in your sewing kit!

There were three different units that needed to be created  to form just one quadrant of each block…so 4 quadrants make just 1 block and there were 5 blocks in all….60 units total needed to be completed and all  in a matter of a week or so as our turnaround was very tight.

 

To match the points of each unit, that old trick of pinning straight through the top point of the intersection and right through the matching top point of the intersection really did the trick and made piecing the units together a breeze.

And of course, the every helpful rubber mallet was most useful in pounding flat (yes you heard me, pounding flat!) the center of each block where there were many seams converging – hey, a quilter got to do what a quilter got to do, right?!

We added a black top and bottom border to frame out the quilt and make the completed version measure the perfect 45″ x 60″ size that was requested for the Free Spirit Quilt Gallery.

Once completed, the top was sent to Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss for some magical and very beautiful free motion machine quilting.  She did a gorgeous job adding just the right amount of quilting here and there without overpowering the design.

So once completed, off to Free Spirit Fabrics it went and took its place in the gallery for Houston Quilt Market!  A fun project indeed.

If you like our Roundabout pattern and want to make one of your own, you can download the free pattern by clicking here.

Stay tuned for more posts on out other designs that have started popping up!

Until your next colour fix~Linda & Carl

 

Welcome 2017!

2016 was indeed ‘a year of real change’…and in so many ways, right?   Presidential elections, celebrities found and lost, international intrigue and domestic scandals, and personally for us – a colourful and most welcome change of pace: a new business, new projects started, older ones completed, lots and lots of UFO’s still languishing from previous years, all the while creating a new bucket list of new projects that will take me some 3000 years to complete (but hey-who’s counting right?) and many, many more ideas and projects  percolating and in the works….

As hard as it was, the end of 2016 was time for Carl and I to say goodbye to our beloved quilt shop Linderella’s Quilt Works located in Southern Pines, NC.   Although we were sad to give up the daily routine of running the shop and familiar interactions with customers and long time friends (check out the montage photo to the right – you might see someone you know 🙂 ), it was definitely and personally time for a change up…..  Eight plus years and then some, is a long time in one job but it was time for us to reboot our creative juices and return to our first passion of designing quilt patterns and making colourful quilts….

However looking back on 2016, we are mighty proud of what we accomplished, keeping two full time business running at full speed and with no employees I might add.  We designed two new patterns now available for purchase : “Mod Dog” & “Splendor”…

In addition to that, we designed a few dozen or so new patterns for some pretty well known fabric companies, such as Free Spirit Fabrics – one of which is now available in kit form at Hancock’s at Paducah entitled, “Flower Show”….

Completed over two dozen or so various quilts or samples for Colourwerx and/or Linderella’s, including our popular “Rainbow Row” for the Row by Row Experience (pictured below on the right); and in addition, taught a full roster of classes  using many of our new designs as well as other projects at the shop or at other quilt shops in the area, in addition to prepping and hosting over a dozen demos and/or events throughout the year.

Needless to say, we are super excited to see what 2017 brings and look forward to once again, just as we did in 2008 with Linderella’s , fostering our new business from the ground up.  We have so many fun colourful, things planned for you this year:  new patterns, new products and kits, free tutorials, giveaways and of course, a few surprises. 

We also have a full roster of new classes and lectures available to local quilt shops, guilds and national shows – you can check it all out here.  If you think your local shop or guild might be interested in hosting us, we’d appreciate your referrals…

So here’s to 2017!!  We hope you’ll continue to follow us on all your favorite social media sites and tell your friends to do the same….and just in case you didn’t know where to find us, here are some links:
“Got Colour” Newsletter
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest

And refer your friends to follow along on this blog as well….

We are so grateful for all of your support this last year and thank you so much for allowing us to share our colourful, quilty journey with you!  We hope to see you all very soon!

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

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Our shop, Linderella’s Will be Closing….

Have you heard the saying “Some of the best things in life happen when you least expect them…?” Well, something has happened and it’s of course, when we least expected it….The Linderella Brick & Mortar shop will be closing…..

As many of you know – this past year we’ve had lots of pots percolating – operating two full time businesses – Linderella’s Quilt Works, the shop & Colourwerx, the design business. We knew at some point we would have to make a choice between the two – well, we’re excited to announce that one “colourful” pot – Colourwerx Designs – has recently boiled over with loads of exciting opportunities that we intend to pursue. Unfortunately that means just one thing…the Linderella brick & mortar store will need to close.

We are “Movin’ On Up” to something new and we hope you’ll join us to say goodbye to Linderella’s Quilt Works in grand “sale-abratory” fashion!!  In order to prepare for this – the shop will be closed Mon-Wed., November 7th-9th! But…

Starting Thursday, November 10th at 10am-
Our “Movin’ On Up” sale-a-bration to celebrate over 8 years in business will begin, and all Linderella assets will be liquidated! This will be fast, folks – so don’t delay!  You snooze, you lose!

*  Storewide – All Merchandise Discounted at 25% to 35%!!
(Online shoppers – stay tuned! What doesn’t sell in the shop will be made available online at substantial discounts in a few very short weeks – Yippee!)

* Beautiful designer quilting cottons discounted –
No moldy-oldies here. It is definitely worth the drive!

* All books, patterns & kits on sale – current titles!

* All notions substantially reduced! Blades, cutting mats, needles & thread – oh my!

* Fixtures, furniture & all equipment for sale –
sewing machines, sewing tables, irons, classroom tools & notions, custom fabric shelves, racks, decor, displays –
all first come, first serve basis!
**Note: Shop owners also welcome – by appointment – please call!
**All fixtures, furniture & equipment must be paid for in full at the time of purchase and picked up from the shop at your expense and muscle prior to the closing date – Failure to do so, will result in you forfeiting your monies and that item and it will be
sold to the next person!

So grab your friends and come on down to our Linderella”Sale-A-Bration” to close out our shop!
Starting Thursday, November 10th at 10am!

Just a little note from Linda & Carl ~
We appreciate each and every one of you, and will always cherish the memories we made with you these last 8 years. Please know that while we are sad to be closing our brick and mortar shop, we are also equally excited about our next adventures with Colourwerx and hope that you will continue to be part of our colourful quilting journey!

Thank you as always for your continued support! It has been our pleasure to serve you, and we hope to see you in the shop for our Sale-A-Bration on or after November 10th  – Happy & bright quilting always!

New Patterns for the New Year!

Happy New Year and wishing you all a joyous and happy start to 2016!!

But without further delay, we have a special new year announcement for you all….

We are so thrilled to announce that our new Colourwerx patterns are now available.  That’s right – Cosmos, Dazzle (formerly the dragonfly quilt), Skyline, Spikey, Colourstruck and Feelin’ Groovy are all available and you can purchase them at our new  Colourwerx Shop located here – http://colourwerx-shop.myshopify.com

We’re delighted to offer them to you in printed form or as a PDF digital download.

And to sweeten the deal and to thank you for your patience, we’re offering a New Year’s Special…save 20% off all orders just using the code NEWYEAR20 at checkout. This special will be for limited time and expires on January 15, 2016.   All orders for printed patterns will ship out no later than Friday, January 8th (PDF’s will be available as a digital download file immediately after placing your order).

And with the New Year means new things coming your way – over the next few months, watch our blog for free tutorials, more colour features and free patterns ….we’ll also be starting up Colourwerx Newsletter – We hope you’ll sign up to catch up on the latest news about us, Colourwerx and what colour adventures we’re up to. …just click here to sign up!….http://colourwerx-shop.myshopify.com/pages/newsletter

Happy New Year and thank you all so much again for your continued support!

Until your next colour fix~

Linda & Carl

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Colourwerx & Quilt Market

We’re back from our first journey as Colourwerx to the Houston Quilt Market and we had a blast….

Quilt Market is the bi-annual trade show where the latest and greatest the industry has to offer is on display and available to be ordered by shop owners and other quilting businesses…most of what we saw at this quilt market will be arriving in your shops 3-6 months from now.  Attending as a shop owner is always overwhelming – there are literally hundreds and hundreds of notion vendors, fabric companies and pattern designers on display, and each one offering something totally unique for your shop.  It is very hard not to just order absolutely everything! 🙂

But this time around, we were also back exhibiting as a pattern vendor….I had forgotten how tiring and also exhilarating having a booth can be…

Carl designed the booth and lucky for us, his past experience as a television production designer and roadie experience really paid off…

We had a nice corner booth space right next door to Moda Fabrics…it was a great spot!  Instead of hanging colourful drapes for our backdrop to the quilts, Carl designed and had printed a series of vinyl banners that showcased our logo and fabric designs – this way the logo and artwork provided some interest in the background (behind the quilts) but better than that, the banners rolled up neatly in our luggage for travel and they did not need fire proofing like most drapes do (a messy task indeed).

Also another added benefit, in lieu of the customary pipe & drape system used to hang drapes or quilts, Carl designed a 3-tiered truss system out of ordinary lightweight, metal EMT (electrical) conduit piping that we purchased on our arrival in Houston from the local Home Depot….This way we had a place for our vinyl banners to hang but also could uniquely layer and change the height of the quilts that were on display….pretty ingenious and pretty cost-effective considering the rental of the pipe and drape from the convention center would have been over $200 and Carl purchased his system from the Home Depot for about $80.00 – it was easily adaptable to whatever we needed.

The first day of set up was spent building Carl’s truss system and hanging the banners.

That night we had a hot date at Wal-Mart (yes, that’s right – Wal-Mart..) to pick up our stools and bar table. It is amazing what you can find at Wal-Mart Online…we had ordered the bar stools and table 2 weeks prior to market and asked them to be shipped to the local Houston Wal-Mart…so easy to do and no hassle or expense of shipping them to the convention center to potentially get lost or misplaced….we went to the special order desk picked up our delivery, and it was back to the hotel to settle in for a night of building bar stools and the table…

The second day of set up, we hung the quilts, placed our stools and chairs and finished off the booth with that fabulous rug from Ikea.  Once complete we “locked” up the booth with our trusty white tulle ‘security barrier’ – amazingly tulle or some garland-like barrier across your booth signals to the rest of the convention center world that you are now closed for the evening…not really secure but hey –  it works….

The next day, quilt market was officially open – Carl sported his paisley!….and it was great fun to be back exhibiting…we had a blast making new contacts but also seeing old friends from long ago..

But after 2 days of set up and three days of meeting and mixing, it was quickly over and packed away in less than 3 hours….always amazing to me how fast this goes!  So now we turn our energies towards our next deadline of November 20th when our patterns for the new designs will be released- very exciting!  And we look forward to the next Quilt Market, which will be in May in Salt Lake City!

All in all, quilt market was a blast, our new designs were a success and we had so much fun! We thank you all who stopped by the booth and welcome those of you who now follow us along on this amazing journey….

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

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