Holly Blog

My Favorite Things...173...A Quilt Times Five

Here are some close-ups of the quilts we showed in our booth at Spring Quilt Market...

I'd had an idea for a series of quilts rattling around in my head for a while.  My original idea was for much smaller quilts, but this series came to me while I was laying out the booth design...This new quilt pattern is called "Star Maker", pattern number LH 09009.

This first version of the quilt was inspired by the cover of our sales booklet...

I tried to use as many of the new Teatime Floral II fabrics as I could in this series, to give the shop owners a good idea of how all of the fabrics would work together.  It was a really fun project for me.

Here's #2 with yet another coloration of that darn Hydrangea fabric...

Version #3 was in the middle of the booth...It was the only quilt that used the new Cross Stitch Alphabet fabric (LH 09016 Bronze) to form a word.

The fourth quilt uses one of my favorite fabrics...LH 06030 Powder, I just love these roses.

The last of the series combines fabrics from TTF I & TTF II.  The Ticking Stripe (LH 08061 Powder) in the outer border is also one of my favorites.  I've had a thing for pillow ticking fabrics for as long as I can remember...

We'll have the pattern fronts available as a click & print download via the new projects page by mid June. (click the side bar icon on the upper left)  That way if you like any of the quilts, you can take a print out into your LQS and show them what you are interested in.

We are still digging our way out of the post-market-craziness here.  I am still catching up on sleep, believe it or not.

Back in two shakes...H2

My Favorite Things...172...The Devilish Details

Hello Again Ladies...

We have had a lot of fun AND a bit of a wild ride here in P'burg in the last few days...

Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill was one of the first people I ran into during set up.  She reminded me that she uses our LH 03035 Champagne in a lot of her BOTM projects.  Which of course tickles me pink, since I am such a HUGE fan of her work, and it's an honor have her using our fabrics. 

The Quilt Branch Ladies were well placed with their best selling book "Six Halves Make a Whole" (great name, huh?) near Checker and the front entrance...Susan and Mary Jane are always more fun and energetic than a basket of kittens...

Brenda Riddle of Little Acorns fame came by our table at Sample Spree..she looked great and was buzzing with energy, as always! 

Tammy Tadd (who I hear is soon to be of Quilt Sampler fame)...peaked over the flower "hedge" looking tan, thin, lovely & a little different...I couldn't figure out why...she said that she had lasik surgery.  I guess it was the first time I'd ever seen her without glasses. WOW, what a difference, congrats on all above Tammy!...

Friday afternoon Eliza-Pam made a surprise visit to our booth...those two are so much fun, (you MUST check out the recent shenanigans on PKM's blog)...I guess you have time to be involved in quilt market & blogging intrigue when you are liberated from having a booth at market...?  Stupidly, I forgot to get a picture before they left the booth.

Late Friday night and all day Saturday, I was sick as a dog with a reaction to something I ate at dinner Friday.  Before we got back to the car to drive home, I knew I was in trouble.  A major league migraine and nausea ensued.  Managed to make it to my meeting Saturday morning with Beth Hayes of McCall's Quilting...and then it was back to the my darkened hotel room for the rest of the day.  Muchas gracias to Martha, Lisa and Lorraine for covering for me in the booth while I waited things out...

This morning I managed to take a few pictures of some of the little things we offered to our guests at the booth, (before they were all given out &/or gobbled up). 

Here's a few pics...Starting with Kristine's delicious customized chocolate bars, with our new Beaded Rose fabric on the label.

Today, Audie Hittle also peaked over the flowers while I was in some sort of a meeting...I never did see Karina, his fabulously talented wife (she's is one of my favorite designers)...she's the creator of the uber-delicious pattern line called "Artful Offerings".  Karina & Audie, let's catch up...I miss you both!

With only moments to go, one of the dearest (and smartest) people I've met in the quilt biz, Cheryl Phillips of Phillips Fiber Art stopped by.  It was so great to catch up with her after not seeing her for so long...

Here are a few more pics of the little things that we designed to promote our new Teatime Floral II collection...(TTF II fabric swatches will be on our LHDG website by June 1).

The little teacup stickers on Hershey's kisses went fast...And how about the little stickers below? I had so much fun designing these...

Last but not least, a close up shot of the Teacakes business cards...

Lots more goodies to come & A Charm Square Pack give-away next week!  So stay tuned for details...

Back in two shakes...H2

PS   Gina Halladay "The Quilters Buzz Lady" couldn't be at Spring Market this year, as she had to be at a machine quilting trade show in Kansas City.  She asked me to be her "girl on the ground" and take some pictures for her blog.  I did get quite a nice assortment of new and existing designer's booths...but NOT all I'd have liked, due to the migraine...I'll be back soon with more on this as soon as I can settle back in at the studio.

My Favorite Things...171...Finishing Early!

This was our 11th market, (my how time flies)...and it has been a GREAT one!...We drove from the New Jersey studio straight through to Pittsburgh on Tuesday.  With me on this trip are the fun & talented Martha Hall, and on her maiden voyage with us is the "fabulous fabric maven" Lisa Fernandez who I've known in the textile world for many a moon...we were lucky that she made time to be with us.

Let me just say that things could have gone tragically wrong with the booth design this time...but as luck would have it, it turned out better than I ever thought it would...I was so nervous about the execution of the "fan-flower-fence"...(see below).  Amazingly, we even finished 5 hours ahead of the deadline on Thursday, so we enjoyed ourselves at the Andy Warhol museum on Thursday afternoon.

Here's a few pics, to whet your appetite...

The cover of our Teatime Floral II sales booklet prompted me to do a series of 5 small quilts (they are all about 42" square). This design is called "Star Maker" it's our new pattern #09009.  For shopkeepers who are doing kitting and special merchandising displays, we'll have free click & print downloadable pattern fronts for 4 of the 5 versions in our projects area in September 2009 (a few weeks before the new TTF II fabrics arrive in the stores).  The 5th version will be on the cover of the original pattern.  As I have told you before, just click on the "projects" icon (on the sidebar to the left) and you can go to the projects page that we have created just for just this purpose!

The flower-garden-gate effect around the edge of our booth turned out so well...It was a real labor of love for all involved.  Thanks so much to Katie, her twin sister Megan, & Kristine for folding the 200+ fans that went into making the fan-flowers.  Paton engineered & fabricated the "wooden flower fence" that I designed.  We've had dozens of people walk by in the last 3 days, and say how much they liked the effect...even uber-designer Kaffe Fasset came by to pay us a compliment.

The "fan-flowers" are made out of color copies of two of my favorite designs from the new Teatime Floral II Collection:  the front of the fan-flowers is Flower Power Stripe LH 07019 and the backs are made of our Beaded Rose LH 05034.  I can't help but think that you'll love them as much as I do...

Here's  a vignette of one of our sales tables.  The appliqued quilt on the left is by Tricia Cribbs of Friend Folks fame...(she's the lady who designed the Turning Twenty Quilts), we met when she was our neighbor at the Fall 2008 Quilt Market.  The PS & teacup tote is by our FOLH Penny Sturges, who couldn't be with us this market. We miss you Penny!  The pink Teacakes cards on the wire stand are images from our new LH 09013 fabric.  One lady wanted an entire set of the teacakes images...We didn't have that many cards to give away, as they were cut by hand...The garden bench and table are the same ones we bought for last spring's market in Portland; they are so cute & comfortable.

We had custom designed chocolates supplied by my friend & studio neighbor Kristine Banek of PersonalizedByDesign.com ...She made up 1000's of customized Hershey's kisses and heavenly milk chocolate bars as give-aways for our booth (that were gone by the end of the first day).  Contact her if you want something special for an event that you're doing, she does all of her business over the web.

There's lots more to show and tell, but I am BEAT tonight, the pace of the last 2 months has really caught up with me. 

I'll be back in touch very soon, with more pictures of our booth and hopefully some market friends too, when I have time to explore the show tomorrow.

Back in two shakes...H2

My Favorite Things...170...Delectable Collectables

It has been so crazy busy around here, I don't know where to begin...

1  Design-wise, we have just introduced a new collection of fabrics called Teatime Floral II, that is an extension of my favorite designs and color palette from last fall's intro, plus lots of new florals AND the introduction of the ALL NEW (I'm so excited) "Delectable Collectables"™..."What's that"? It's a new grouping of fabrics designed to co-mingle with a lot of the fabrics that we'll be doing in the next few years.   The "Delectable Collectables"™ are inspired by my 35 years of collecting...It started with a Lone Star quilt in my teens and since then, it's been a little bit in every medium...20th century pottery, biscuit tins, old cookbooks, vintage needle arts booklets, old posters, catalogs & postcards, (and I'm just warming up)...Honestly, I think that "Delectable Collectables"™ could go on for years, with the amount of things that I have in my library...

I just love the collage-like effect when florals are mixed with other more unsusal patterns & objects...My quilts for this season are inspired by a series of paper collages that I started working on (in my spare time, ha!) for the last 10 years or so...

Here's the front of our new sales booklet that the distributors will be showing your LQS in the next 8 weeks...Orders will be taken by our distributors from the shop owners until the third week of June, and the fabrics will be hitting the stores at the end of September...

The Beaded Rose border LH 05034  was inspired by a purse that I have from my grandmother...The Teacups LH 09012 are from an old European Housewares catalog...we will print them at life size.  The flowers are recolorations of some of our best selling florals...we did them in all sorts of sizes this time...from 8" tall to 1/8" small...The florals and the color palette are like the glue that holds this entire collage-like look together, IMHO...

The Teacakes LH 09013 are from a 1920's European cookbook that had the most delicate and fascinating cake decorations...The background designs are antique calligraphy. The stripe with the flower names is our best selling Flower Power Stripe LH 07019, that has been re-colored to go with TTF II. It was inspired by old seed packets that I have "had a Jones for", for over 25 years!

2 Presentation-wise, BIG NEWS:  we've gone to our first fabric-less presentation ever for this new collection of fabrics and quilts...So we designed a sales booklet that incorporates scans of our fabrics (that I took days & days color correcting), so that the colors in the booklet look as close as possible to the actual fabrics swatches.  I'll put up some of the pages in the days to come so that you can see what I am babbling about...

If you like what we are doing, my hope is that you'll tell your LQS about these new fabrics, that you've seen here on the blog.  (I've noticed that not many shop owners actually have the time to go online and read blogs...they are usually busy day and night!) And it's always troubling when we hear from a store that "our sales rep never showed us this"...There are still about 6 weeks left in our selling period before we place orders for the fabric...with the economy so unpredictable, we thought that this was the most fair way to present the line to everyone...this is a big change for us, since for the last 5 years we have printed fabric many months in advance of showing a new line.

3 Doggy-wise, we've been through a rough patch.  Of the 17 dogs that were liberated from the horrible puppy mill in Missouri in February, 4 have come down with liver failure. One of them is a foster dog at Paton's house.  It's been a race against the clock for these adorable, good natured (the best temperments I've ever seen) group of dogs...Like a Veterinary episode of House around this area as a team of vets, and concerned & commited rescue and foster families try to save these dogs lives...please say prayers for these dogs...

So it's a bittersweet time for me, as the doggies are at my feet most days...they are frequent guests at the office...they have melted my heart as I sit at my IMAC designing fabrics, quilts, catalogs, labels, business cards, and getting ready for Quilt Market in Pittsburgh (next week!)...

More to come, LOTS & LOTS!

Back in two shakes...of a puppy mill dog's tail.

;º)

H2