I am a big fan of Marisa McClellan’s Food in Jars blog, and was lucky to take her pear-vanilla jam class here in Portland last year. She’s coming back this week to teach a strawberry-lemon jam class again, plus she’s having a book party at Powell’s on Hawthorne/Pastaworks to celebrate her new cookbook – also…
I’m so happy to be part of Katie and Jacquie‘s blog party weekend of posts celebrating their stellar new book, Quilting Modern! Katie is president of the SMQG and Jacquie is past president of the KCMQG, a current member of the CMQG, and on the national board too. These two know their modern improvisational quilting,…
I love Marisa McClellan’s blog Food In Jars (and was so lucky to take her pear-vanilla jam class last fall – especially since we have pears on our tree for the first time this spring!!)… but I’m still waiting for the first round of spring and summer things to preserve. I’m definitely doubling my jam…
This spring has kind of brought a bit of everything at once – rainy, then sunny, then rainy again… crazy busy, then blissed out on vacation, then back to the laptop… sewing, cooking, gardening, a long-awaited new fence, birthdays, and bagels! I have a lot of catching up to do, so I wanted to share…
It’s been a whirlwind month, but I wanted to post about a few things I got to do that I’m excited about… I won a wonderful surprise gift certificate from collage (thank you!!) and picked out some amazing art supplies for the kids’ Easter baskets, got to interview the fascinating Lizzy House for the PMQG…
I’m very excited to be reviewing Mend It Better, a wonderful new craft book by Kristin M. Roach (also author of the lovely blog/project/zine Craft Leftovers) today! Mend It Better offers a wide variety of useful techniques, from darning and patchwork to weaving and crochet, for reworking and salvaging garments and beyond. As Diane noted…
Portland author Shawn Bowman has a fantastic, funny new book out called Criminal Crafts (also the name of her stellar website + twitter) – a collection of thirty outlaw projects for scoundrels, cheats, and armchair detectives. From cocktails to crime scene carpets, Shawn has created some pretty incredible projects for mystery, thriller, and noir lovers….
I had so much fun sewing my PMQG challenge block using all the lovely solids Michael Miller sent us! I have always wanted to try string quilting and this felt like the perfect chance to work on something new. Love all the colors together! I wanted to share how I made my block, so if…
Modern Quilt Guild founder and Block Party author Alissa Haight Carlton has a beautiful new quilting book out, Modern Minimal. It officially comes out Friday, but I was very lucky to get a review copy from Stash Books to give away at tomorrow evening’s PMQG meeting! Alissa’s 20 designs are wonderfully simple and driven by…
Did you know that National Quilting Day is March 17? Thanks to CrafterNews for featuring my log cabin patchwork tote bag pattern and book in their NQD feature this week! To celebrate, I wanted to share a new pattern extra that a few readers have asked about: making a Modern Crosses block with pre-cut jelly…
I had such a great time at Sew Expo this weekend! Here are my finds – more on these in a minute. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip. Nancy and I drove up Friday night with a Burgerville stop, and got to hang out with Michelle, Brittany, Kaci, Rachel and Cherri for a…
I think I’ll use my Leap Day for a sewing round-up post! I stitched up a PMQG name tag, a Lisette market skirt, and a matching headband in the last little while and I really like all of them. It took me awhile to finish my name tag (you can see a couple dozen awesome…