Golden Butterfly Award presented to 3 of my Blog Heroes

Golden Butterfly Award
An award given for generosity of time, sharing of knowledge, inspiration, encouragement and charitable contribution to Quilting & Fiber Art.

Bloggers are exceptional individuals! They share their knowledge, time and in fact lives with us for no mare than a comment left on a post to let them know we're watching & listening.

For me, Quilting and Fiber Art Bloggers take the term exceptional to amazing! In general, Quilting & Fiber Art is a personal and sometimes lonely adventure. We love what we do but being able to share our work with others may only come once a month at a guild meeting or with small mini groups.

Hence my reason for this post...I'd like to just take a moment and thank the diligent Bloggers that allow us to share their lives and bring us together for encouragement, answers to questions or just shear entertainment!

3 of my Blogging Heroes:

Kim's Quilting Adventure - One of my Mini Group Gals and her adventures in quilting & photography!

I Have A Notion - Her product testing escapes & her opinions with insight keep me in stitches - pun intended!

SewCalGal - For her breadth of knowledge along with her dedication to uniting Quilters and Fiber Artists

For me, these gals are prolific with their knowledge & teeming with their generosity of time & spirit! They share their lives and experiences with us as we follow their journeys! Thank you Ladies!

If you find a Blogger that you feels is deserving, please feel free to pass along the Golden Butterfly Award. We hear negatives far too often in life, when we should be celebrating the individuals that bring us joy!

Moving Forward

Added link to Website Blog

5 Yummies for the Jumbo YoYo Maker

5 Yummies for the Jumbo YoYo Maker and a play date with Kim!

Large-Scale Fabrics

Yes, I'm a Fabric-aholic!

I get quite a few questions on how to choose coordinating fabrics to showcase the large-scale print fabric that I am so fond of using! I thought I would share my search for the perfect combination.

The panel at right is 33" wide 43" long. I want two 18.5 square for centers. After a bit of fussy cutting, I have my set.

Here's my formula:

[1] really fabulous large-scale print with 2 colors that I would like to highlight [purchased]

[1] medium scale print with similar colors [purchased to coordinate or lucky from stash!]

[3-6] coordinating smaller print fabrics that have bits of each color in them [stash]

I'm not too fond of solids so you'll find soft tone-on-tones are my solids. I just think it adds more interest but sometimes a small border needs a big voice and nothing but a black solid will do!

Next comes the auditions! I layout my fabrics in rolls, chunks or folded strips to check color and weight of fabric pattern before I ever touch my rotary cutter!

The blue batik was a must to balance the deep blue of the panel and it had a bit of purple and fuchsia from the panel. I love a great batik!

I like the green bamboo in the border fabric to blend with the green of the wisteria leaves and also add a bit of eye candy in the border to the overall design.

The next issue was the purple border vs fuchsia. The panel had a hint of purple but not enough to warrant a large voice and over shadow the panel, so I opted for the fuchsia to make the flowers pop a bit and blend the overall tone.

The last was the yellow vs green with the deep blue for the oriental key pieced block above & below the panel. The yellow fabric had soft areas of pink and green blended in the background.

I decided upon the green fabric with the deep blue for the piecing since the idea was to highlight the panel design. The yellow drew my eye to sharply and took away from the overall effect that I wanted to achieve.Sometime contrast can be our friend and other times it just a bit to over powering.

My trusty assistant always has an opinion and a second set of eyes never hurts!

I hope this helped and answered the questions.

One for Me...One for You!

I just wanted to thank Colleen Nunes and the wonderful group of Ladies at Quilters Crossing for donating their time and fabric to make pants for the Rockland Family Shelter in New City, NY! The afternoon went by so quickly and then I headed home to finish a large-scale fabric quilt.

I've been working on compilation of designs with Nancy Dill owner of QuiltWoman.com.
Due to come out for Spring Market.

"Care Filled Stitches"

I've been a bit side tracked with my jackets and Wearables lately working on a project with Nancy Dill the owner of QuiltWoman.com - more about that on the next post!

So today I'm taking a break and I'm off to Quilters Crossing in West Nyack NY for a "Care Filled Stitching Day" to give a free workshop on my Lounge Lizard Pants to benefit the Rockland Family Shelter in New City NY.

You'll get a free pattern and workshop on how to make the pants as long as you make one pair to donate to the Shelter!

If you have the time please stop by for a very worthy cause!

See you there!

A New Day - A New Way

I read a headline awhile back that stated:

"Are we multi-tasking so much that we are getting forgetful?"

Sounds way to familiar! Well it's a new day, a new year and a new way to begin!

One of my dear Cyber friends Rosalie and I have toyed with the issue of a blog for quite some time.
I started & stopped. Rosalie just started hers and it's wonderful!

Another dear friend Kim, has a marvelous blog and I check in between our small quilting get-togethers to check on her and her never ending adventures!

A wonderful friend Deb & a lovely lady just finished a sample for me of my Sizzling Circle Crane pattern. The colors are so not me! That's why I love it & her! Deb's my crazy Gal Pal that surrounds herself in almost every color of the rainbow!

Here's to a New Year! Happy 2009!