Blue Nickel Studios

admin June 7th, 2010

Hey you all!  thanks for all the great comments here lately….it is good to know that I am not completely writing to the wind….  I think I actually do have some more Quilt Market posts to do…but I really needed to get things caught up around here….So I posting this post tonight and with it another set of  prizes.  And while I am typing this I am printing out all the comments from the last 3 or so posts that had prized attached and will be announcing them tomorrow or Wednesday in another post.  I don’t really have a lot of time tonite to post either, but I wanted to share with you some more highlights from Market…

First on the list are the Westminter Laminates….these are just incredible.  When I heard about them, I definitely thought of thick bulky oilcloth….These are NOT that material!!  They are very pliable and sewable it seems…       

 And to prove it…Look at this!!  Ruffles! out of Laminate!  Can you believe it?  I couldn’t ..even a rosette.  Everyone MUST try this now!!  Really….

Back over at the Seven Seas booth where all the fine Japanese Imports were….were these cool little kits….aren’t they the yummiest assortment??  

And little wind up felties…too cool! 

And Heather Ross’s newest Line with Kokka….Far Far Away II.... 

But the REAL highlight for me was meeting and chatting numerous times with Anna Maria Horner....  

This lady TOTALLY amazes me.  She designed all these fabric and these projects….and she has 6 KIDS!! From 18 to 1!  AND she is as sweet and genuine and thoughtful as she seems in her blog.   I would have to say that her blog is my very favorite for the way she mixes family and design and pain and laughter.  My heart is often stirred by her musings on parenthood.  It is such a wonderful and difficult and ultimately fulfilling and draining  life work…and Anna Maria captures it all …..surrounding it with beauty as she goes….including her now famous Quilt Market Spring ‘10 shoes!

Here she is smiling on the last day just as much as the first day!!     

Yeah, I really enjoyed meeting her here at Market.  My first quilt for Free Spirit was for her Good Folks line,  and then I did a Flannel Little Folks quilt  last year for Free Spirit too.  I have emailed her on numerous occasions, and generally made a pest of myself…and she was still nice to me here in Minneapolis!!

And then there were her equally charming and beautiful model/assistants…. Allie with her Incredible Red Locks and Charming Smile…

And Alexia with her Stunning Snow White features and Gentle Grace….

One more thing before I go to the prizes for this blog post.  Anna Maria lives in Nashville, and saw many of her neighbors lose much during the flooding they had there this Spring.  So she has this going on to help…I will talk more about it later, as I am psyched to help out on this project.  But I wanted to make sure you knew about it as well if you felt inclined to help with the effort.

And Anna and I put together these little gifties for 3 lucky winners….A free pattern from her newest book Handmade Beginnings and some of her flannels and prints….and two little notebooks…(the third prize gets a little extra flannel)...   

For this project why don’t you tell us all about your first memory of something that someone made for you as a child…not bought in a store, but made by hand or with their hands for you. And when we get somewhere between 30 and 50 entries, I will start drawing names randomly.  

And I promise I will get winners of all the previous prizes announced tomorrow evening my time (Pacific) so if you are on the East coast it may be later for you….

Are you still enjoying these market Photos??  I still have an SD card full of Floral pictures from around the Blue Nickel Studios here to share that I took before Market…so eventually you will get to see them too…

Thanks for dropping by the Blue Nickel…..see you soon!

Scott

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admin June 2nd, 2010

Yes, here are more Quilt Market moments via Blue Nickel….Here am I with Amy and David Butler….I barely met David, as I heard he was mountain biking the whole time and only came to take down the booth….yes, Amy is still smiling on Sunday at the end of this very busy 4 day event.  For new and upcoming peeps like me, its fun…for Amy, I am sure it is very hard (but fun) work…  

More Amy Butler beauty…..the pillows are a new pattern coming out…the walls and the paper flowers are her new line Soul Blossoms coming out later this summer…..I think August is when it will be available…  

and Amy’s cool shoes….yeah, I know  I’m a guy and as a rule we don’t care too much about fashion, and I must admit I don’t know much about fashion per se….but these were pretty cool shoes…even though I got them in transit….  

Most everyone has posted about the New Rowan Yarns coming out in ”Amy” colors.   I must also admit I  don’t now much about fashion….but I do know that my daughter squealed when she saw these legwarmers…call it the 80’s in me, but I thought they looked pretty cool too….

 Amy, deep in thought, probably about how long will it take to get all this stuff packed up…...    

My favorite picture I think ….I know I am going to love this line…..  

Here is Amy’s marvelous team  Mallory and Diane…...Diane pretty much runs the place so Amy can be…. well…Amy….(I can’t wait til I have someone take care of everything for me….and I don’t mean at the Nursing Home, okay??)   .......And Mallory, who was pretty quiet, is the new kid on the block I think….and as sweet as can be….

Since Soul Blossoms isn’t on fabric yet…they were showing it in paper on these great giganto flowers…....

I must say talking with Amy off and on during the  Market was just so wonderful…Truly she is remarkably unassuming and very “real”....  I could have been talking with her in the grocery store over the apple table in the vegetable department…not a discouraging thing about her….She was even giving me advice on some of the things I am striving to do…Not like a  Know-it-all, but like a sister sharing with her brother…..I feel like I could have gone to high school with her, and even though I really barely know her, Amy made me feel like an old friend.

And here is just another wonderful designer who just lives one state away down in Oregon….Valori Wells.   Valori has been designing for some time now, and was RAISED in the quilting business, so I love talking to her as she really KNOWS this world inside and out.

I just love the quilt behind her and these bags….      

Here is her new line Nest ….....    

And here is her gift to one of you!!   3 patterns and some Nest fabric…possibly before you and even get it locally….but I just read some of it is shipping out now….

So to win this Valori Wells prize pack….why don’t you tell me something you like about birds or a story or a poem or something else….and then when I get to 25 comments….I will start looking and reading and (here’s the tough part)....pick my favorite bird “moment”....so make me laugh or make me cry….the one that resonates with me most will win…..

Don’t forget that there are prizes to be won still on my last 3 blog posts as well…..and I haven’t drawn on them all yet….one might be over the 25 comments already, but you can still throw your name in the hat.  I don’t have the time to choose them all tonight or tomorrow….so I will see what the status is on Friday evening and see what needs to be drawn and who will win what….AND…don’t forget the next few posts will ALSO have prizes…so if you don’t want to miss them you can sign up  on the left under “Subscribe” and you can get email announcements when I post….I don’ t send out junk mail, and it isn’t linked to anyone else sending spam….so you only get stuff when I post…

I am really looking forward to hearing your bird stories….(oh, and did you notice, Amy had birds up in her booth as well)...so this was a good theme for the post, I think….

Cheers,

Scott

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admin May 30th, 2010

I decided to paint the bench that I refurbished….uh 2 years ago….and well do a little quilt market prep at the same time.

hmm…blue spray paint…..a bunch of nickels…..what can be done about that??

Dots!!

And a bunch of Blue Nickels to giveaway (and switch out in the concession stands at Market! if you happened to get one of these at Quilt Market from the concession stand contact me at bluenickel5 (at) earthlink (dot) net…and I will tell you how you can win a fabric-y prize! )

And now onto the show:

We’ll start with these Moda Ringleaders!  I saw this red tutu from miles away, and I had to grab a photo for my daughter who is into the gothic lolita look…  I did not catch these lovely ladies’ names in person, and I had the “cheap” camera with me, so I can only tell by closing in that on the right in all black we have the Lovely Erin, and on the left in the red tutu we have the Lovely Someone ending in “y”    Corrections are gladly welcome at anytime!  This booth was all the Moda finished goods and as always they had great stuff! 

  I met the lovely Kathie Alyce who has a new book out with AQS….neat stuff…I have more pictures of Kathie’s work….next post okay?  Kathie used to work for the post office, she told me.  She also told me that they told her she smiled too much….uh..yeah, I can see that good thing she got outa there!

Here is my friend Patty Young in her booth….she won a second place prize for it…I really don’t pay that much attention to that, but I was happy for her and her husband Jon, they build this booth together….I think she is talking to another famous designer, but I am not sure. Didn’t meet her…..Patty’s new line includes a bunch of knits…knits don’t do much for me personally, but apparently they are really good quality knits from everything that I was hearing there.

And then here are some more random shots in no particular order….but all drew my attention multiple times over….but notes taken?  uh…well no, not really….so I leave  others  to tell you all the detail stuff …..  

AND here is the first prize pack for the quilt market giveaways that I scored for you…BUT I still don’t have enough comments on the previous post giveawayto give that prize pack away….and I have more to give away in the next couple posts….so come on, my blogosphere buddies!!..help get out the word on these prizes.  This prize includes what you see here, plus a surprise fabric pack that has yet to be made up.  To win this prize identify as many of the designers represented here in this picture.  The more you identify, the higher your chance of winning.  I will do this drawing next weekend (June 5th or so) or when I get 25 comments whichever comes first.  And don’t forget, if you commented on the last post, you can’t win one prize until I get 25 comments or the second chance prize until I get 50 comments….so to help yourself win, you have to give others the same chance.       

  Here is another picture of this prize in a less glorious setting with the fabric bundle going with it: 

   and yes, I am giving away Scissor fabric…that is big for me, I love that print, and it is not easy for me to share, but I will      ...so I hope you enjoy…

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admin May 26th, 2010

I cannot believe it has been 25 days since I posted….I think that is a crime in Blogland, isn’t it? At the very least a misdemeanor. I am freshly back from Quilt Market, and had a marvelous time meeting some people for the first time and some all over again, and some of the people I met for the first time I had know for years here in the blogosphere…

For an excuse, I offer the following pictures of what I was working on for Quilt Market…3 quilts …didn’t I say I wouldn’t do that many at once LAST Market?  Yet I succumbed…  one I didn’t have to deal with the quilting or the binding, and so I did that one on top of the two I committed to earlier in the season..yet, they still came to be done all at the 11th hour…I think it was that real life thing cutting into my time, and oh yeah, a slight bit of procrastination on my part?

Here are the quilts and their pix in no particular order:

the line Free to Grow by Nancy Mims for Robert Kaufman fabrics…..

And The line Brady Bunch by Michael Miller Fabrics:

And then the Boys Will Be Boys quilt by David Walker for Free Spirit Fabrics...(that direct link may not yet work as I don’t think it will be available for a few weeks still?)

and yes, in this last picture, that is a skeleton peeking in on the left….my doll-maker wife  needs things like that for proper proportions you know. 

The patterns for these quilts should be available online for FREE eventually. I will post links here when they are, and I would love it if when you do one of my quilt designs, if you join the Blue Nickel Studios group page on Flickr and post a picture of your creation there.

And now that I have got you caught up on what was happening around here before Quilt Market ..... tomorrow I will post about my time at Quilt Market, who I met, some actual pictures at Market, some upcoming news (although pretty much everyone has posted about it by now!) and you’ll like this part…some giveaways…quite a few actually…

And so let’s start things off right for the end of May here at the Blue Nickel….with Giveaway #1…..when I get up to 25 comments here on THIS post (that’s 25 comments for 25 days), I will give away a scrappy package with a little bit of all the fabrics in these quilts….okay you twisted my arm, when I get up to fifty comments I will giveaway two scrap packs!! 

Come back tomorrow for some more of my ramblings, pix, and giveaways too, okay??  see ya then!!

Scott

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admin April 17th, 2010

Okay so the Easter decorations are still out, and there are apple blossoms on the trees up front, but I am working on this:

Okay so does anyone else find this selvedge snippet funny??  I think I must frame this somewhere it makes me laugh so much….but that is  probably only funny to textile geeks like me (and you if you think its funny too, I don’t require that you do, just so you know)        (oh, and the Robot Cake sketch…that’s for a certain fabric/quilt designer)  subtle, huh?  This said designer also blogged about the video that has totally captivated me all week….will take a lot to top this...

  This Christmas quilt is going to be for a magazine this fall, so I can’t show much more than this on it, but I am thoroughly enjoying these Michael Miller Christmas prints…while I was in the studio today, I thought about this postcard I have from way back in college in the early 80’s….       

 Its sentiment and statement still crack me up and resonate deep inside my spirit….  

And truth be told, I am not just working on the above Christmas quilt, but I also working on this pink/grey/yellow number for Robert Kaufman Fabrics for Quilt Market coming up….you can see bits of it here mixed with the Christmas strips….

and waiting in the wings is this project for Free Spirit…..

okay, so today I am just so swamped I can’t think straight….and yeah, I didn’t throw the links in for the fabric companies…you’re smart, you can go Bing it or Google it or something like that…

I am still getting over the fact that the postcard mentioned above is almost 30 years old….but I am sure in that cases, that I couldn’t have been older than 3 when I picked it up in college…....  sigh 

Gotta get back to the studio…I am think Deck the Halls music will be in order tonite….

maybe next post, I will get the Easter pictures posted that are sitting on my desktop….maybe…

Keep Happy Peeps, Keep Sewing!!

Scott (that’s me!)

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admin October 21st, 2009

The fabric line: Nicey Jane

The designer: Heather Bailey

The goal: Design a quilt of Uber-feminine proportions…..

The story:  I sent some sketches to Free Spirit a couple months ago, but they didn’t like them as they were too “masculine” for this line….I submitted them because I had seen a few snippets of the new line, and thought I would really like to work with Heather’s designs because I liked her past work, and she was so pleasant to talk with at Quilt Market this past spring the few times we ran into each other there.  But each design I submitted was met with “too masculine”...so I just gave up and figured it wasn’t a good “fit” this time….

Then what?  Three weeks before Market as I am finishing up the previous two quilts for Free Spirit…I get an email asking me if I had time to squeeze a third one in….I say sure, which one?...yup, the one that I was nixed on twice…they still wanted to see a design, so I came up with something that pretty much stretched this pointy-angly, straight-stitching designin’ boy…something with lots of Curves to defeat the Angular Masculinity I tend to veer to in my work…..I got it done in time, and I really liked the end result…I may have to make one for us now….

 In the past when I have done quilts for Free Spirit I have picked the prints myself, but this time they chose…and it was all pretty light and frothy…there are some darker prints, but I didn’t get them in this round.  At first I was a bit frustrated with that, but then I started really liking the soft dreamlike palette and worked with it.   

I am so loving this orange print…why am I so attracted to Orange lately? I never really cared for it in the past…and it’s not just for the pumpkinability of it either…just really lovin’ it lately..    That’s a lot of half circles….. 

and here are some finished half circles…. 

More half circles…with their backsides showing…. 

 The main quilt without all the half circles sewed into the binding.  I really like how these half circles give another dimension to the quilt even before quilting.

Here is a snap of the finished quilt at Quilt Market courtesy of Jona G.  I forgot to take a picture of it finished  before I rushed it off in the FedEx, so I asked Jona, and she sent this with apologies for the lower quality…I think she snapped it with her iPhone….It’s not the best shot, but it gives you the general idea.   I get the feeling that the lighting wasn’t always the best at this Market….  

Oh and by the way, Jona has a ton of great posts about Market and links to other great coverage of Quilt Markets present and past…

So that’s it for today folks….This quilt and the Rebel quilt and the Flannel quilt will be on Free Spirit’s Free Downloads page one of these days…as soon as I get the directions finished and Elyse at Free Spirit gets it on their site….

Hope you enjoyed my Post-Pre-Market postings…Keep coming back…I still have to announce winners from my last giveaway….and it looks like the 200th Post is looming on the horizon…and it is promising to be a whopper!

Oh yeah, and sorry that some of the pictures don’t have the best lighting…sometimes I work late at night, and the flash does something wonky….or I forget to change some setting somewhere…you know..there’s always something…

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admin October 18th, 2009

I know I promised more pictures of the quilts I sent to Quilt Market in my stead….last week, I promised those, huh?  Sorry peeps, I just didn’t have the energy after work to get all the pix loaded and the links done up, so those posts were filled with my filler posts…they really weren’t “filler” in the sense of what they put in those cheap hot dogs though, you know.  Those posts were part of our everyday life here at Shiloah Cottage.  But Today you will get the scoop on at least part of the process I went through with my Rebel Yell quilt for Free Spirit’s Rebel line by Douglas Day. 

This line has these HUGE Panels! And I do mean HUGE!  Very Manly from the creator of the Be A Man brand, I guess.  Well the Free Spirit peeps wanted to be sure I included one of the two panels that was part of the collection.  I ended up not using my favorite which was this:      because it was just too big!  How big…here’s a picture for the scale of this panel   

This is Max, me, and Noel, my oldest….Noel is 6’5” .....so yeah they were big…

Here is the rest of the process including the interesting task of fussy cutting out a mug of beer….not what most guys are doing on a Friday night, I can assure you….. (actually it could have been any time, Wednesday nite, Sunday morning…that bit about Friday nite was just for the vernacular effect of it )

and below is the top finished, but not quilted…I had so much to do in September getting all these quilts ready and trying to be part of everyday life..I forgot to get pictures of it quilted and bound….and I loved the binding, because I used the same grey/black/orange stripe for the binding as I did for the inner border and the corners…I really like how it finished it off. 

Well, there you go. And now I need to go run into work on this Sunday morning because I have to take Linda to the doctor for a outpatient procedure, and even though I am entitled to a personal day now and then, this time of year I just have too much to do and am already feeling behind as the busy season is quickly approaching like an unbridled freight train…..and yes I do feel somewhat like I am tied to the tracks

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admin May 23rd, 2009

You know you can find a ton of pictures from quilt Market on other blogs….Like Jona’s or Patty’s or Kim’s (and Mary Beth’s)  or Kathy’s or Jessica’s.......and a good many links from their sites as well…I am even in some of those pictures….there is one picture out there somewhere of me though…that seriously has me re-figuring how to lose 40-50 pounds….I am NOT telling you where that one is!  Ouch!

I didn’t take all that many pictures of booths or the market itself. Actually in looking at my camera now, well, I only took one booth….no “celebrities” at all and I interacted with quite a few…I mean, I got the chance to kneel on the floor next to Kaffe Fasset, and show him my sketchbooks while he rapidly was working on a needlepoint rug, I met A SLOUGH of designers, Paula Prass, Sandi Henderson, Patty Young,  at the Fabric 2.faux party....I had dinner with Jennifer Paganelli, Laura Gunn, and Heather Bailey, and Jennifer’s friend Nancy, I had a couple great chats with Joel Dewberry, Valori Wells, and Brandon Mably (now there is a funny man!)  I met Jay McCarroll and saw the incredibly everywhere at once Mark Lipiniski again (met him officially last year).....Okay, so I did actually get Amy Butler to autograph a copy of Mid Mod for me….(Elaine, calm down now!) but that was my only outright fan-crazed act…...I also met a lot of behind the scene people in fabric companies and publishing companies…..But you know the best thing about meeting all these wonderful people is that they are really just like you and me, people who eat, drink, sleep, worry, hope, love, laugh, are shy, are loud, have concerns, and wonder what is coming next.   What is cool is that most of these folks get to what they really like…and that makes them pretty happy to be around it seems!   (not that I am above name dropping though by any means….just look at all those links!)

Two pictures of the actual Market…..The Lakehouse Drygoods booth…I loved the fence of paper flowers:       And that is it of my photos of the actual Market, but trust me those links up above are terrific…you can easily waste spend a couple hours blog-hoppin’.

Weird to take so few shots, I know, but I only brought the cheapo camera, and I knew I wouldn’t get the quality I wanted….and so what did I take pictures of?  Well, bricks and manhole covers to name a few things. I went after abstract things here….things to inspire new ideas was my goal.  Don’t know if I did or not, but that’s what I did.  Here are some of my shots of the manhole covers:

  they put someone that sews (a sew-er, get it?) down there…how barbaric!

radiates joy, doesn’t it?     I love the detai of this one. 

This one matched the building next to it in metal work design.    

and here’s the building:          I think that is so cool!

And my deepest apologies for being so far behind on posting here and on my flickr account.  Hopefully I will get caught up, but you know let’s be realistic….life is pretty full, and in the summer it is even harder to get in here to post, although I can get some pretty cool photo-shots. Time will tell if I can balance all this out. If you sign up to suscribe though, then whenever I post you will know, and that is a good thing! 

Oh and My lovely wife Linda is having a Huge giveaway on her blog….and I know how you people like giveaways So go here to find out how to play her game that she has going over there!

Tomorrow?  Carpet and wallpaper from the hotel….woohoo! 

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admin May 18th, 2009

I just wanted to say that Market was BLAST…and I met MANY wonderful people.   But Today I had to drive up to my Mother-in-law’s house to clean out her gutters, and I have still got to finish unpacking and organizing all the business cards I collected  and get the reciepts for all the treasures I bought in the Accounts, and clean up the studio from the tornado like after math I left it in when I left…and get the jungle lawn mowed….so there may not be too many pix here for a while….But for some great coverage of Market check out Jona’s blog or True Up so far…But I am quite sure there are many more very wonderful posts going online as I type and as you read now!

Oh, and I have some exciting news, but I can’t share it yet, and it may be awhile, but hopefully soon I can share with you something pretty cool!

So I am off to climb the stairs to clean in the studio and sort the treasures….I suppose the bills and lawn can wait, right??

Ciao!

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