It has been three months since we moved into the new house and two and a half months since I started my new job and I have been remiss with my posts. So I have decided that a quick catch up is in order!

In the spring, right before the big move, I was working on designing some of my own patterns for fabric. This was such a fun project and allowed me to hone my illustration skills, helping me to find passion in graphic design and illustration again. Using my experience buying fabric at the quilt store, I wanted to try to make a collection of five or six patterns that would work together in an entire quilt. The toucan theme just popped into my head, pretty much fully formed, one night as I was falling asleep and woke up ready to give it a try. I am pretty excited about this and learned a lot in the process. There are many things I like about these patterns, things I would do differently next time, and many things I have yet to learn through more practice, I can’t wait! A new post will be coming in the future about incorporating my samples into a project to see how everything works together in reality.

Sample Proofs!

My patterns on notebooks and tote bags. 🙂

In June I took another terrific class through Fern’s School of Craft and had a chance to try my hand at Sashiko on a pre-made pillowcase provided at the beginning of the class. I have been wanting to try this and even bought a cute little kit while vacationing in Maui a few years ago, but it had since been sitting ignored in the closet. I found this class to be quite an easy exercise in stitching and I account this to my inclination towards hand quilting. We were given four different stitch patterns to choose from: Seikai Ha (Blue Ocean Wave), Yabane (Fletching), Juji-Tsunaji (Linked Crosses), and Shippo Tsunagi (Seven Treasures). I chose Juji-Tsunaji and love how it turned out. I will definitely be trying more of this and can’t wait to incorporate it into my quilting.

I love the new house so much for so many reasons but one of the most fantastic elements is that the house has provided me with the wonderful advantage of having my own art space! It is so great to have a space that I can just sit down and start working whenever I have the inclination. In the old apartment my stuff was everywhere and I was stuck working on projects on the dinning room table. It was a huge roadblock for my motivation to have to set up and take everything down anytime anyone came over, especially mid project, not to mention having no space to do anything else. Here I have a space dedicated to quilting and one for watercolour. No more sitting on the floor at the coffee table trying to paint!!! It’s amazing. I also have more spaces for storage and organization, the pièce de résistance being an antique cabinet from the 1920s where I can display all of my fabric for easy access, no more fabric shoved in plastic containers! Plus the cabinet has walnut wheels!!! I finally have a proper workspace and it has already brought me so much joy.

Quilt corner: Look at that beautiful cabinet.

That’s about it for now, I started hand quilting a quilt that I created using only fabric that I dyed myself with natural materials but was finding it a bit of a slog, so I am benching that for awhile while I work on other ideas. I am also exploring my own backyard and having a lot of successful experiments dyeing yarn with the trees and plants within it. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all of the yarn balls. Most likely a lot of fun quilt experiments are in my future!

One last thing, I ended up putting my quilt, “Snow in Grandmother’s Garden”, in at the fair and won 1st prize!