Blue Moon Batiks

UPDATE!!  AnneD from @batiksbythebay – you are the randomly selected winner for our Blue Moon Batik Blog Hop – please email or dm me at colourwerx@embarqmail.com with your mailing address to receive your prize!!  Thank you to everyone for playing along!! 

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Hey y’all !  Today is our day for the Blue Moon Batik Blog Hop and we couldn’t be more thrilled!

We’re one of the last stops on the hop so let’s get that very important ‘blog business’ out of the way first – there are giveaways !!!

We’re giving away a free Mini ModDog pattern  and there’s a giveaway over at Canton Village Quilt Works too!  So be sure to leave a comment below and then after you read this – hop on over to Canton Village Quilt Works and enter the giveaway there too (scroll towards the bottom of her blog post)!  Back to the hop….

Blue Moon Batiks is the new signature collection of designer extraordinaire and Colourwerx good friend, Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works for Island Batiks.  Kathy Engle designed this collection for Jackie and it is filled with lots of super yummy, super saturated moody blues, purples, lavenders and turquoises.

Carl and I met Jackie almost a year ago at the Spring Quilt Market.   Jackie is also the author of the best selling book “Splash of Color”  and of course, a lover of everything #colouricious – so naturally, we three hit it off!

When Jackie mentioned that the Blue Moon Batik Fabric Collection was coming out soon, I jumped at the chance to make her a few Mini ModDogs to display in her booth at the Fall Quilt Market.

Here’s the assortment of lovelies Jackie sent out to me.  This also gives you a wee bit closer look at the fabulous batik designs in this collection – can I have a “ooo” and a “ahhhh” – especially for those snowflakes and pinecones please! (thanks!)

I first set out to make (2) ModDog pillows for her booth.  One with the snowy white background and the other with that deep indigo blue.  Of course both dogs had to also have beautiful ribbon collars from Renaissance Ribbons!  ok – that was fun!

 

Once I finished those two  –  I had fabric left over and of course, and a few spare moments to make another  (well – more like a few spare hours….)  Wanting to make something ‘just for Jackie’, I decided to play up on her ‘moon’ theme and applique a huge, bright moon in the background of the next ModDog.

I used my trusty Creative Grids Circle Savy Ruler to cut out the moon and applique it to the background fabric.

 

Next – I made a beautiful indigo colored ModDog and appliquéd him over the background.  And voila!  I was just ‘over the moon’ in love with this guy!

 

Blue Moon Batiks will be in your local shops very soon so be sure to ask for them by name and tell your quilt shops you “need” some Blue Moon Batiks by Jackie Kunkel!!

 

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Ok – remember to enter our giveaways – make sure to leave a comment below to enter  for a chance to win a Mini ModDog pattern,  and then hop on over to Canton Village Quilt Works and enter Jackie’s big giveaway!!!  We’ll pick winners on Saturday, February 10th!

Thanks for hopping along with us!  Until your next colour fix~ Linda & Carl

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To Market We Go! Houston Recap & Giveaway!

To market, to market we go!  As always,  the Fall Quilt Market was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.   Except this market, someone came knocking early – yup – Hurricane Harvey crashed our quilty party a few months prior.  Many of us vendors and many more shop owners and attendees were concerned that either Houston would not recover or that the promoters of the Quilt Market would be forced to cancel.    Well, I’m happy to report that neither was true and Quilt Market went off without a hitch – and amazingly, there was no sight of any effect from Hurricane Harvey except for upbeat banners and artwork like this one throughout the city!  The downtown Houston area was lively and the convention center (which just completed a gorgeous 2 year revitalization) was perfect!  And added to this excitement, the Houston Astros were in the World Series!  This all made for a very exciting market to say the least!

We debuted 2 new patterns – Mini ModDog & Mini Spikey – and before you change that channel – make sure you leave a comment at the end of this blog and ask your friends to follow us and do the same to enter the giveaway!  Two lucky winners will win either a Mini Spikey fabric kit or a Mini ModDog fabric kit –  just leave your comment below and let us know which one you’d like and why.…ok – ‘nuf said…..anyway back to market……we debuted 2 new patterns – Mini ModDog and Mini Spikey – both are now available for purchase on our website!

We also attended our first ever Sample Spree selling already made Mini ModDog samples along with 6 Mini ModDog patterns – this way, shop owners have an already made sample and take it right back to their shop and start selling the patterns – nifty idea, right?!…Here’s Carl,  moments before the madness started.   Btw, the dog samples were a hit and the shop owners were thrilled to have an already made sample!  Below is a slideshow of all the Mini ModDogs samples we put together – we made 2-4 versions of all the styles you see – all in all, we estimated that we stitched up about 45 samples in the weeks prior to market – Wowwee!

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Of course, I needed to share these cute little pups with others too.  I also made a few for my friend, Jackie Kunkel at Canton Village Quilt Works to display in her booth –  using her new fabric collection, “Blue Moon” for Island Batiks.  This batik collection is super  gorgeous and so super saturated in all those blue, aqua, lavender and purple colours.  And of course, a play on the name – “Blue Moon”,  I couldn’t resist adding a moon behind one of the pups to make it extra super special for Jackie.  🙂 Jackie was so nice she even showed the Mini ModDog pillows to her schoolhouse attendees to generate more interest!

And spotted in another booth – Renaissance Ribbons had their very own Kaffe Fassett Mini ModDog too.  Renaissance Ribbons makes the most gorgeous ribbons and trims and since we embellish all of our Mini ModDogs with these trims so it only seemed quite natural that a pup pillow should be in their booth too!

And finally , we also designed and stitched up (with a lot of help from Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss and her extraordinary custom machine quilting) a grand total of 6 more quilts for Free Spirit Fabrics and 2 more quilts for Island Batiks. 

Free Spirit Fabrics always does a great job of displaying the new collections via their quilt gallery and this year they won the blue ribbon for best booth!  Yay! Super secret sewing was in full swing here at the Colourwerx Dezign Haus from early May onward – some of the fabric designers we had the honor of designing and making quilts for were:  Kaffe Fassett Collective, Tula Pink, Jenifer Paganalli,  and Corrine Haig.  Most of the quilts you’ll see here are now available as free PDF pattern downloads on Free Spirit’s website here.

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In addition to that, we also made large lap size versions of our Colourwerx patterns:  Spikey and Mix It Up! for our friends at Island Batiks in the their newest fabric collections debuting at market.  They displayed these in their booth – Take a look!

Whoo – time to rest?  Nah – we’re already planning our trip to Spring Market which will be in Portland…Yippee!

Anyway, thanks as always for following along with us!  And remember to leave a comment to enter the giveaway for a either a Mini ModDog fabric kit or Mini Spikey fabric kit! And be sure to ask a friend or two to do the same and leave a comment   Two winners will be randomly selected next Friday, November 17th!  Until your next colour fix – sew the rainbow and happy quilting!  L&C

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “Tattooed” Mini Spikey & ModDog

Early February,  we had the honor of creating a mini version of our “Spikey” quilt for our friends over at Andover Fabrics using Canadian artist and fabric designer, Libs Elliott’s,  newest collection called “Tattooed”.  The quilts commissioned were to be hung in the Andover Booth at the QuiltCon East Convention that took place in Savannah, GA.  We were beyond excited and thrilled to meet the challenge.

“Tattooed” fabric is just starting to hit your local quilt shops, and if you haven’t seen it yet – go check it out….It is a gorgeous collection of richly saturated jewel toned prints and makes the most perfect rainbow quilt or added to your stash is a great basic. You can also check out more of Libs Elliott’s quilts and her designs at her website …..her work is really innovative and fabulous as she uses computer code to create her designs.

Back to the mini “Spikey” – first I needed to arrange the “Tattooed” fabrics in my preferred color order.  Additionally, because we had a size requirement, I needed to reduce the Spikey triangle template to 3″ in length (instead of the original 8″ length).  These were going to be some tiny triangles!  The background and borders were cut from Andover fabrics Chambray collection – this is a beautiful woven fabric that creates texture, depth and movement to the background.  Love it and I absolutely need more now!

I then began the task of sewing triangles together…With our Spikey pattern the key to matching the triangles up is to offset the 2 triangles by just about 1/8″ and sew a perfect (not scant) 1/4″ seam – before I set out to sew any “Spikey” quilt I always have to do several test runs until I get it just right and then I set that pair of triangles off to the side as my reference while sewing all of the others. (Click on the photos to enlarge).

Once done – the mini Spikey was ready for quilting…since I don’t consider myself the most expert machine quilter, I used a monfilament thread and simply quilted a 1/4″ away from all of the spikes and then quilted abritrary lines in and out through the outer borders….Sometimes simple is better….and Voila – done! (You can click on the photos below to enlarge 😉

So off it shipped to be placed in the Andover Fabric quilt gallery.  What a thrill to see our mini Spikey displayed with all of the other gorgeous quilts in the Andover Fabric booth at Quilt Con East….I love the eyeball pillow and the jewel quilt, don’t you? it was thrilling to see it displayed with all of the other gorgeous work.

While making the mini Spikey, we also toyed around with making an additional project from the “Tattooed” fabric  – a mini “ModDog! He, alas, did not make the cut….oh well…

But here are the results!   I first wonky slashed ‘n sewed some “Tattooed” strips together and cut out the dog body.  Then I textured the Chambray background with straight stitching lines using a collection of brightly colored 12 weight Aurifil threads – these are deliciously weighty threads and work perfectly through my Bernina sewing machine using a 90/14 size topstitch needle….no problem!  And I love the way the background looks!  Next, I appliqued around the dog with a 50 weight Aurifil thread, added a piece of gorgeous Renaissance Ribbon for a collar, and even fussy-cut  a “handmade tat”  from Libs’ previous collection “True Love” for his rear end – ha! I think he came out super cute and we’re plotting more of these in the future!

Many thanks to Giusseppe and Daryl at Andover Fabrics for the opportunity and to Libs Elliot for designing such a gorgeous collection.  And if you like our “Spikey quilt or “ModDog” pillow, you can purchase patterns for the larger versions from our Colourwerx website or a PDF download from our Colourwerx Craftsy site.

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl