Tag Archives: Quilt Market

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At work in my Studio

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I have been busy preparing for International Quilt Market next week.  The Spring Quilt Market is open to the trade only and is being held in Pittsburgh – a city I love to visit.  And, my new fabric collection  is debuting there.  After designing fabrics for kitties and cats, I had to show the love that I feel for dogs as well and designed Its a Dog’s Life for Quilting Treasures.  My cutting table is piled with the fabrics for the projects that I’m sewing for Quilt Market.

I will have a free pattern or two to post after Quilt Market.  I’m sewing an apron and a quilted tote bag as well as a badge holder.

If you are attending Quilt Market, I want to invite you to attend my Schoolhouse session, “Using Trends to Boost your Sales”. on Thursday, May 14 at 3:35 pm.  I would love to meet you.

OK, back to sewing – I have to get these finished!

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International Quilt Market – all the fun is not inside!

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The weather was beautiful during the International Quilt Market in Houston so if felt good to walk through the new Discovery Green Park across the street from the George Brown Convention Center.

As I walked through the park on Sunday, I saw the funkiest golf cart.  It has been created by a high school for an entry into a motorized parade and then donated to the park. Decorated with dragons, sequins and pearls, it was a crowd stopper!

After a invigorating trip to Quilt Market and then a couple other trips, I’m back home creating new art.  My new fabrics, Its a Dog’s Life will be released soon.  I am waiting some samples so that I can start sewing with it and give you a free pattern!

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Exciting quilt exhibits plus a gorgeous dress from International Quilt Market

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When walking International Quilt market, there is so much eye candy to grab my attention.  This dress in the booth of Coats and Clark really jumped out at me just from the sheer beauty.  (My picture doesn’t do it justice). This dress is befitting the dreams of a fairy princess!

The dress was an award winner in the Bernina Fashion show last year.  The fabric was all sheer and machine emellished with Coats Dual Duty XP threads which you can see in the detail closeup.

In addition, crystals were added in the back.  The construction of the skirt was really unique with  streamers of fabric sewed at the waist, with the edges slightly overlapping and sewn around the bodice in several layers.

Below are more wonderful quilts from the quilt exhibits.  (If you missed my earlier post with some quilts, check back a couple of posts to view them.)

Cynthia St. Charles from Montana designed this quilt of a Village.  I love the colors!

Another fabulous quilt with wonderful colors, this one was designed by Carol Taylor of NY.

Pat Watson of Victoria, BC Canada designed this quilt.

This quilt by Katie Williams of Colorado was an award winner.

All of the quilts above have such wonderful colors.  These were just a sampling of the quilts exhibited at International Quilt Market and they all were wonderful.

I  have one more article I want to post from Quilt Market – but its something fun, unique and whimsical that I saw outside the market in the park

The quilt designs are copyrighted by the quilt designers.  The photo’s are copyrighted and cannot be used without the permission of Phyllis Dobbs.

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Superwomen and booths at International Quilt Market

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I have some special treats from International Quilt Market.  Although it was close to Halloween, these treats are not the “trick or treat” kind.  They are simply treats to enjoy! 

I visited with my friend, Anna Marie Horner, who designs fabrics for Free Spirit.  Anna had some exciting news.  She is expecting a new little one.  And while she was at Quilt Market, she received more exciting news.  Her booth won “best booth” for the 2nd time in a row. Gee, Anna, you are really a superwoman!

Gina Halladay is the owner of Threaded Pear, a pattern company and is in her beautiful booth.  In addition, she is the author of the fabulous blog, Quilter’s Buzz.  Gina also had some good news.  She has purchased a quilt shop, so in addition to her blog, a machine quilting dealership and pattern company, she will have a retail shop. I think Gina qualifies as another superwoman.

And in addition to old friends, I met up with a new friend who I met through Twitter.  Lani Padilla owns thequiltshope.net, an online quilt shop.  Its fun to meet a Twitter friend in person! (along with her hubby, Sam!)

While walking the show, I saw the most beautiful flowers – the large fabric flowers that were across the top front of the booth of Daisy & Dell. The flowers were a really  neat display.  Daisy & Dell is a pattern company from Cypress, TX owed by Pat Bruce.  I love flowers and the fact that these were fabric instead of real, means that they live forever.

Although I don’t have pictures, it was fabulous to spend time with my wonderful friends, Brenda Pinnick and Vicky Schreiner.  Spending time with friends makes the shows even more special.

I still have more to show from Quilt Market – check backfor more gorgeous exhibit quilts.

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Jay McCarroll, Project Runway winner, debuts new fabric line at Quilt Market

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Jay McCarroll, the winner of the first season of Project Runway was at Quilt Market with two new collections of fabrics with Free Spirit.  And I had the delight of meeting Jay as well as have my picture taken with him.

I read more on the internet about Jay.  As a winner of Project Runway, he was awarded $100,000 but turned it down.  At the time, their contract said that they would own a percentage of all his professional ventures in perpetuality.  Wow, what a clause! It had to have taken a lot of courage to turn down the money and I admire him for it. (Project Runway no longer has this clause, thank goodness.)

Please check back as I have much more to show from Quilt Market as well as information on my newest fabric collection – coming soon – Its a Dog’s Life!

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“Quilt-opoly” and embroidered quilt blocks

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Quiltopoly Board Game

Quiltopoly Board Game

If you are a quilter or sewer, you will love the new “Quilt-opoly” board game from The DMC Corporation that debuted at International Quilt Market.  Its like Monopoly, (which by the way,  I’ve always loved to play) but features quilts and quilting.  The properties are all quilt blocks with escalating degrees of complexity.

Quilt-opoly board game for quilt lovers

Quilt-opoly board game for quilt lovers

I have a special love for “Quilt-opoly” – I designed the graphics for it, including the quilt block properties, the the actual quilt stitching properties shown in the center of each row, as well as some of the sayings on the cards.  It was a fun project to work on and I just love the way it turned out. And I can’t wait to play!

In addition to “Quilt-opoly”, I designed and created the quilt blocks in DMC’s booth featuring their fibers and threads for quilting.  I really loved working with the various textures represented in the various fibers of their product line.

Log Cabin Quilt Block

Log Cabin Quilt Block

Sunflower Quilt Block

Sunflower Quilt Block

Diamond In Block

Diamond In Block

Butterfly Block designed by Phyllis Dobbs for The DMC Corp.

Butterfly Quilt Block

As a special note, I want to say that The DMC Corporation is not going bankrupt or out of business.  Since I have worked with DMC a lot over the past several years, I occasionally get asked this question.  DMC-US is a separate entity and is doing just fine.  They have sold their other divisions and are concentrating on the fibers only and are doing extremely well, I’m happy to say!

Tomorrow, I will write about another “celebrity” that I met at Quilt Market as well as show come of the many gorgeous quilts that I saw there.  So, please check back!

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Houston Quilt Market – Personal appearance by Marie Osmond

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International Quilt Market is always such fun in additional to being such a beautiful show with all the colors of fabrics and quilts everywhere.  I have lots of photos and information to share with you from my recent trip to Houston for  Quilt Market and will be blogging all week with details.

Quilting Treasures, the fabric company that my fabric designs are with, also produces Marie Osmond’s fabrics.  I was asked to design a quilt with Marie’s new fabric line “Gypsy Breeze” for Quilting Treasures’ booth at Quilt Market. When I saw the fabrics, I knew I would love designing this quilt, especially with the blue, aqua, green and purple colors. (the colors are a little distorted in the right side of the photo by the show lighting).

Marie Osmond

Marie Osmond

Marie attended Quilt Market and spent time in Quilting Treasures booth meeting attendees.  I met and talked with her about the quilt.  She was very complimentary and pointed out her favorite parts of the quilt as well as posing for a photo with a hug!

Marie with Donna McKinney from Quilting Treasures modeled aprons made with other fabric collections of Marie”s.  Julie Johnson, editor of Sewing Savvy magazine, center in the photo, brought the 2 aprons made with Marie’s fabrics that will be in the book The Best Apron Book Ever.   (An apron that I designed will also be in this book and I designed another apron with some of Marie’s fabrics that will appear in the book Sew Special Fat Quarter Gifts.)  Both books are being edited by Julie.

It was an absolute delight meeting Marie! And she is a quilter as well.  She brought a quilt with her that she had just made before Quilt Market, but unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of it.

Check back tomorrow for another Quilt Market post with an exciting and fun new product!

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Project Designs for Quilt Market with “Meow, Meow” – my new cat fabric

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I’ve worked up a couple of projects with my new “Meow Meow” cat fabric that I designed for for Quilting Treasures.Meow Meow Tote Bag I will carry these with me to Quilt Market to use during the show to show how the fabrics work up in sewing and quilting projects. 

Meow Meow show badge holderThe badge holder and tote bag will also be quite useful as well to keep up with my “stuff” during the show. 

I will be in Quiiting Treasures’ booth Saturday afternoon 2-4 pm to meet attendees.  There will also be other quilt and sewing models in their booth featuring “Meow Meow”.  So for those of you attending Quilt Market (open to the trade only), please stop in.  I would love to meet you.

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The art of Matisse, Picasso, and Van Gogh in quilts

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I love art and definitely have my favorite artists.  While I was walking the International Quilt Market in Houston this past October, I spotted a few pieces of art.  But these were not ordinary art prints.  Matisse art quiltSunflowers by Van Gogh They were art quilts based on a Matisse paper cut “The Sadness of the King”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, and a Picasso.  They were created by Virginia Robertson of Virginia Robertson Designs for Princess Mirah batik fabrics by Bali Fabrics, Inc. Picasso Art Quilt

As you can see, these quilts are quite detailed and looked exactly like the fabulous paintings they represent. What a great job Virginia did making these! They were beautiful to look at and another example of the treasures you can make with fabric and thread.

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New Fabrics

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Hi, welcome to my blog and my first entry. To introduce myself, I am a mother, wife, and pet owner. I spend my days being creative as a professional artist and designer in textile and surface design (that’s basically anything you can put a design on). I have also designed mountains of needlework and quilts and have written quilt books. 

My latest design venture was creating a fabric collection of 20 fabrics, Sweetheart Ballerinas with Quilting Treasures. These fabrics debuted last week at the International Quilt Market in Salt Lake City and had me floating above the ground for several days.  Phyllis Dobbs with a quilt made of Sweetheart Ballerina FabircThat’s me in the Quilting Treasures booth standing in front of a quilt designed with Sweetheart Ballerinas.  It is such fun to me, designing, sewing and quilting items with my fabrics, although I didn’t  design the one above. 

This is a snapshot of part of the Sweetheart Ballerinas fabric collection. The entire collection can be viewed on my website. Phyllis Dobbs Sweetheart Ballerinas fabric stash

I love creating things to use in home decor, especially with fabrics and a sewing machine.  My  home is always a work in progress as I am always changing things.  There’s nothing like a new color paint to completely change the way a room looks. Add some great fabrics and you’ve redecorated so easily with such things as window swags or throw pillows. I have so many pillows that they have to be moved before you can sit or sleep. I don’t know what it is about pillows, but I just love them.  Sweetheart Ballerinas PillowcaseThis pillow is for sleeping, covered with a pillowcase I made with the aqua colors of the Sweetheart Ballerinas. 

I guess its time for me to quit writing as Kitty Kat is sitting in my lap wanting to help me type. Thank you for joining me and  I hope you are back again very soon!