Don’t you love surprises!  Receiving a new book is always wonderful but this one has 3 quilt projects of mine in it.  5-10-15 + Fat Quarters, published by House of White Birches is a beautiful book filled with projects that you can complete with pre-cut fabric bundles.

Now, wouldn’t you just love to make this dog coat for your dog?  It’s made with “It’s A Dog’s Life” fabrics I designed for VIP by Cranston Printworks. (Just a note to tell you that some fabrics of this collection are in some Walmart stores as precuts). The pattern is easy to make so you can have the best dressed dog in the neighborhood.

OK, now that your dog is dressed, you can move onto making a cozy quilted pillow for a favorite child or each of your favorite children, since I’m sure you have more than one. This “chick pillow” is made with a full size pillow so it will fit nicely on a bed. Three pockets to hold little treasures are appliqued with a chick on each pocket. Can’t you just imagine the surprises that can be tucked away in these pockets for safekeeping until the next morning! (no snakes or snails I hope!)

Now its time to move onto some serious quilting and make a table runner for yourself or as a gift. A “Warm Breeze” tablerunner is made with Jim Shore’s Angel Among Us fabrics by Quilting Treasures. I had the good luck to meet Jim Shore a couple of months ago (see my prior post).

Since you have now had a few days of sewing and quilting, take a break, eat some ice cream!

I hope you enjoyed looking at these quilt pictures and I would love to see any that you make with these patterns.  Check out the book and you will be delighted as I was with all the fun projects made with precut 5″ charms, 10″ squares and fat quarters.

Happy sewing!

Phyllis

I’m featuring my art from “It’s a Dog’s Life” fabrics on products in my new Zazzle store, with delightful and vibrantly colored dogs in their daily routines.  I just opened the store so that my art can be easily found on products.  I am beginning with the art from my “It’s a Dog’s Life” fabric collection and have an extensive collection of products geared toward quilters with Quilt Lover Dog.

I am featuring Quilt Lover Dog, Beach Dog, Angel Dog, Gardener Dog, and Chef Dog currently with more dogs and categories to be added daily.  The Quilt Lover Dog has an expanded product line that quilt lovers as well as quilt guilds will love.

Products include aprons, stationery, tote bags, cards and notes, and much more.  The notebook above has matching pages to hold notes on your quilts as well as guild notes or use as a scrapbook for your photos. All products can be customized to add your name, guild name and anything else you want on your product.

Please check back for more products and happy quilting!

Phyllis

Enchant your kids with a whimsy locker caddy to hold their “stuff” or a whimsy notebook cover with a large pocket on the cover.  You can easily sew both of these using the free patterns on the Today’s Creative Home Arts website.

Think how fun it will be for kids to have this completely useful locker caddy hanging in their locker.  I designed it with various size pockets to hold their school supplies and other treasures.  Plus, think how neat and organized their lockers will be - oh well, one can only hope!

The locker caddy and notebook cover are more projects that I designed  using the “It’s A Dog’s Life” fabric collection I designed for Quilting Treasures.  I love sewing with these fabrics and seeing the projects come to life with personality plus! Of course, you might say I’m a little prejudiced toward the fabrics, but they still make me smile.

Using this free pattern for a notebook cover, you can cover a drab notebook.  The large pocket on the front will hold those little extra items that might be needed for class.  Again, another little step to keep them organized

I hope that you enjoy these patterns.  I would love to see a picture of your project made with them, along with the smile of the lucky recipient!

Happy Sewing!

Phyllis

I just finished the pattern and instructions for this free apron pattern available for you to download.  I am showing 2 aprons in different color combinations with different accent embellishments.  Both aprons are accented with large dog block pockets on the top part of the apron.  One apron has an additional small pocket and the other is appliqued with a bird and dog bones. The aprons are easy to make and can be completed in 2-3 hours tops.

The fabrics that the aprons are made with are the Its a Dog’s Life collection that I designed for Quilting Treasures by Cranston Printworks.

I just love aprons and am delighted that they are so popular.  I remember when my grandmother and aunts wore aprons daily and seeing all the aprons now brings back wonderful fond memories.

For products to coordinate with “It’s A Dog’s Life fabrics, please visit my Zazzle store.

I hope you enjoy the patterns and sew away.  I would love to see a picture of your finished apron.

“Bone” appetit!

Phyllis

I have created a free pattern for you to make this tote bag.  I designed it with my fabric collection “It’s a Dog’s Life” for Quilting Treasures by Cranston Printworks.  As you can see, the fabric collection features very whimsical dogs and will generate plenty of smiles.  The tote is easy to make and can be finished in a couple of hours. The tote has large pockets on each side made with different dog blocks. The bag is lightly quilted with stipple quilting.

Enjoy! And I would love to see a photo of any totes that you make with this pattern.

Phyllis

My life has been going to the dogs recently, but in a good way.  I’ve been sewing and quilting with the whimsical dog fabrics that I designed.  The collection, It’s a Dog’s Life, is available from Quilting Treasures, a Cranston company.  I recently designed and made this quilt, which will be featured on a segment of Martha Pullen’s Sewing Room on PBS this fall.

The pattern is available on Quilting Treasures website for downloading the free pattern in PDF format.

Happy quilting, or woof, woof!

Phyllis

I taped two segments for the Martha Pullen’s Sewing Room yesterday for the Warm Company ( they make the fabulous batting and fusible web that I use in all my quilting and applique projects).  The taping was exciting and Martha is such a warm and nice person.  Well, not just her, everyone who works for her is the same way, so it was a very enjoyable day.  Of course, I carried my camera and took photos during the day.   The project featured on one segment was a quilt, which I made using the fabrics that I designed, “Its a Dog’s Life” for Quilting Treasures on which I demonstrated a stipple quilting technique. Martha’s assistants, who are great at setting up the sets, are arranging the quilt.

For the second segment, I designed this apron shown here with Martha. It also is made with “Its a Dog’s Life” fabrics and features applique. The fuchsia fabric used for the main part of the apron features dog bones, so I appliqued dog bones around the bottom.  Since the block and yellow fabric also feature birds, I appliqued a bird at the top above the pocket. I know I’m short, but standing next to the apron which was raised for viewing by the camera, I look even shorter. 

The segments will be shown this fall and winter (2009-2010), so please watch for it on your local stations.  I am working up instructions for the quilt and apron and will post the free patterns here shortly.

Thanks for visiting!

Phyllis

I was invited to write a guest blog on ThinkCrafts.com by Create for Less.  I enjoyed writing about crafting and how it inspired and influenced a creative career for me.  I learned crafts early, taught by my mother and aunt.  As I see all the emphasis on various retro periods, I think of the crafts I was doing during each period.

ThinkCrafts.com is hosted by a craft expert and professional of many years, Maria Nerius and is a fabulous site for anyone who loves art, crafts, creative design and working with their hands.

I invite you to read my post and would love to receive comments from you.

Phyllis

The International Quilt Market in Pittsburgh this month was wonderful as usual.  Color was everywhere as new fabrics were displayed (including mine - Its a Dog’s Life with Quiting Treasures).  The mood was upbeat throughout the show and buyers were doing just that - buying.  I took loads of pictures of great vendors as well as my friends   But, if you read my last post, you know that my photo files were corrupted on the disk (the file names are all goofy symbols and Windows doesn’t know what file types they are- so if anyone can tell me what happened, I would love to know).

I am really excited about something that I purchased at the show (actually its being purchased through my local dealer).  I bought Bernina’s digitizing software, “DesignerPlus Version 5″ so that I can turn my art images into machine embroidery.

I plan to start with the motifs from my fabric collections. I also want to create designs to put on some of my projects featured in magazines and books.

Call me a nut, but I actually love learning new software, until I get to a frustration point!  The good thing about this software is that my local shop (Robin’s Sewing Shoppe) will give me lessons on using it, in addition to the demo I received at Quilt Market.  So, any frustration points can be resolved locally!

But the next step is that after getting home, I have decided that I want to upgrade my sewing machine.  That actually means starting new since my machine can’t be “upgraded”.  I’ve been visiting the websites of ALL the sewing machine companies to see which one has the features I want. Boy, now that’s frustration!  Some of the websites have much more information than others and its frustrating looking at one that has very little information on the features of their machines.  Then when I find a feature of one machine that I really like, I look back at all the sites again to see which ones have that feature.  And I love features! Unfortunately, the $$’s go up with each feature so I am going to have to tone it down.

So now, I’m off to visit local dealers to make a decision on which machine I want and to see if I can find one in my budget.

Oh well, wish me luck!

Phyllis

My bags are packed, my Quilt Market projects are finished, my Schoolhouse talk is ready and my boarding passes are printed.  Flying is my period of rest, thinking and reading as things are always so hectic getting ready to leave.  I picked a James Patterson book to read in my flying and airport time.  And I’m looking forward to meeting up with friends who are also going to Market - dinners, lunches and just walking the show together.

I will return energized, inspired and ready to hop back to work on new designs and art.  I will post Quilt Market happenings and celebrity sightings when I return as well as the projects and patterns that I created for market.

If you are attending Quilt Market, I want to invite you to attend my Schoolhouse session “Using Trends to Boost Sales”, Thursday 3:35 in room 325.  And of course, I would love for you to visit the Quilting Treasures booth to see my new fabric “Its a Dog’s Life”.

Until I return,

Phyllis