Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day!

    Jan 24th is Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day! It's an idea put together by FabShopHop people to celebrate our local quilt shops!
Several bloggers have been asked to profile their local shops, why they love them, why our LQS are important to the quilt/sewing community, and all the other fun things that they mean to them. You can find the list of blog hoppers here.




 My local shop is Hyggeligt (think Google it with and h) Fabrics, which is located in downtown London.

 For those that are local it's at 515 Richmond, in the plaza, you have to go through the walk way in the middle to find it. She's just moved down a unit into a much bigger space so there will be lots and lots of new fabulousness to come!
There is even a great space for a classroom!

 Hyggeligt is owned by Chantal, who is a really fun person, and she turned her love and collection of Kaffe Fassest fabrics, along with lots of other great fabrics like Liberty of London, Free Spirit etc, into an uber modern shop.
I know it may sound odd that my favorite shop is uber modern in focus, because I'm not really a modern quilter. I love bright fabrics, I like some large prints, but I do lean more traditional in the sense my quilts tend to have designs, or symmetry or whatever else you want to throw in there for your personal definition of modern vs
traditional.



 Along with cottons Chantal has a growing selection of voile (so incredibly soft!), velveteen, Dupioni silks, and organic fabrics.


 



There is also a huge collection of the gorgeous Oakshott Cottons from England. They have such a shimmer, depth and elegance, but are still easy to work with. 

  I love the amount of colour in her shop, I love that she carries Aurifil thread (which is actually how I found her shop), I love the patterns & books she carries (both clothes and quilts), I love that she will pretend to care what I say as I talk her ear off for an hour or two, I love that she's put the effort into founding a Modern Quilt Guild in the city for all of us who don't fit the traditional guilds,and in general I just love going in an soaking up the creative, bright and friendly atmosphere that is Hyggeligt Fabrics.

What is your favorite shop? What makes it special?

Merry Christmas!

I almost missed it! Merry Christmas and other seasonal holidays to all of my lovely bloggy friends! I hope you have had lots of love & joy today.

Machine Quilting

I feel so lucky to be able to quilt for others. This quilt was sent by Julie in Ottawa and it was a blast to quilt! She did an amazing job hand embroidering the logos of several of bands the recipient has been in. Her hand work is just amazing. Truly, I felt lucky to be asked to work on it. I do all my work free hand so this was a very intense quilt. I used over 3000 meters of Aurifil 50 wt in 1158 for the 84*92" quilt.

Giving me more or less a free hand I had some fun with the borders, I started off with a design from one of the fabrics and played with it until it felt right in the border and outer half circles. They looked really neat on the front but apparently I forgot to take a close up. This is on the back. Julie had asked that I not trim it own so that's what the blank space is.

Julie had asked for pebbles in the centers of the blocks, and pebbles she got. Lots and lots and lots of them. I swear I was seeing them in my sleep! There were 15 centers to pebble!

For the bow ties I quilted a loose Greek Key design, not being too picky with the direction of the keys, and it turned out really well I think. Gave it that non-conformist look, which I think went really well with the theme of the quilt.

It's been sent off to be given for a Christmas present and I'm feeling so good that I got to help make someone's Christmas a but more quilty!

If you're interested in having me quilt a quilt for you send me an email or check out the Machine Quilting section

Magazine Projects!

I'm so excited to have a project in Generation Q Magazin! The current edition (Winter2012) has 1 of the 7, YES SEVEN, projects I did out of 1 charm pack!
The rest of the projects are available on the Generation Q site, for FREE! You can find them here.

This is my very first project in a magazine and I really couldn't be happier! It's been a goal/dream of mine and I can cross it off the list now!
Not that I wouldn't love to have more, but I can say I've been published in a quilt magazine!

Quilting at Market

So I mentioned in the review I did of Kelly & Andie's book, Modern Designs for Classic Quilts, that I had gone to Quilt Market.
I'm not going to do any posts about it per se,there are TONS of Market posts, Fat Quarter Shop did a crazy job of covering pretty much everything, and on every platform, the blog of course, but they even have Youtube videos!

What I want to show is the quilting I did for Sarah Watson of Art Gallery Fabrics! I quilted two quilts for her booth!

The applique quilt got different quilting in each square and I used Aurifil 28 wt in their variegated grey (3770) for the darker sections and 50 wt of the white (2021). Mixing the different weights gave a really neat texture to the quilt and let me make some sections stand out much better then others.

The peel quilt I quilted with the 50 wt white as well and quilted a heavy swirl all over. I left the peels unquilted so they would really pop and show off the fabrics, which of course is the point of quilts at Quilt Market.

It was an incredible honour for me to have quilts I'd quilted (her mom pieced them) hanging at Market, but even more awesome was the fact that Sarah ended up winning Best New Exhibitor!!


  I'm not saying my quilting had anything to do with that, it didn't, but it is still super cool. Sarah's booth won because she had such a fun design, and it was just really well done.

The fabrics are Luxe in Bloom and should be available any day now!

Blogathon Canada Winner!

The winner of the giveaway from Sew Sister's from Blogathon Canada is...KarieAnn!! Congratulations! Email me with your address!

Thank you for joining in and I hope you found lots of new Canadian quilt bloggers to check out!

Blogathon Canada - My turn!

Today is Ontario's day for Sew Sisters Blogathon Canada! I'm so excited to be one of the host bloggers and I have a whole list of bloggers for you to meet! First I want to tell you about a book review I did of my friends book "Modern Designs for Classic Quilts". You can read it here.

Back to Canadiana! All of the giveaway's are ioen until tonight so you have time to go back and meet all of the other province/territory bloggers! YAY for a virtual tour of Canada, WITH prizes! You can find the list with the posts that have prizes at the end of the post.

First I want you to go visit all of these lovely ladies that are based in Ontario (or the center of the universe as it is also known) and love quilting too!

Patti's Patchwork

Sew Joy

Quilter's Workshop

The Quilting Princess

Stitch Literate

Buttons Quilts

Les Quilts

Bungalow Bay Quilts

Quilt Matters

Quitty Prickly

Artystuff

Today in Kenogami

I get to giveaway an EPP (English Paper Piecing) starter kit from Sew Sisters! I'm totally addicted to hexies, you can see some of them here & here, and I want you to be too! One lucky winner will get this kit with thimble, charm pack of Little Black Dress by basicgrey for Moda, 1" hexie papers, some high quality needles and even a glue pen! 

To win is simple! Leave me a comment, including your blog address if you have one, and tell me one new technique you'd like to try! That's it! no hoops to jump through. I'd love if you followed me here on the blog, over on twitter, or facebook but I'm not going to make you.

The rest of the prize/list tour!

Sunday, November 18	Kick-off!	Michele	Quilting Gallery
Monday, November 19	BC	Felicity	Felicity Quilts
Monday, November 19	BC	Cathy	Blueberry Patch
Tuesday, November 20	NS	Jeanette	STAMP * STITCH * CREATE
Tuesday, November 20	NB	Holly	Through My Window
Wednesday, November 21	AB	Shena	Apple Pie Patchwork
Wednesday, November 21	SK	Patti	Retired to Quilt
Thursday, November 22	QC	Marika	Live, Laugh, Love... Sew
Thursday, November 22	MB	Heather	Church Avenue Quilts
Friday, November 23	YT	Vivian	Quilting Under the Midnight Sun
Friday, November 23	YT	Janet	Caribou Crossing Chronicles
Saturday, November 24	ON	Cathi	Quilt Obsession
Saturday, November 24	ON	Cara	Cara Quilts
Saturday, November 24	ON	Kaye	Miss Print