2010 Fall Quilt Market, Part 5

Who wouldn’t love one of these cute blue critters? They are FuddleSnugs by Jayme Crow (right) of Bella Nonna. (That’s Megan Cook hamming it up on the left.) The had fantastic quilt designs ruffled purse patterns, and lots of other darling bags. Check out the bag designs here.

  They also have amazing gilded leathers that they used with Texture Magic to achieve this fabulous lumpy surface, used to great effect in their small purses like the bronzy-brown one shown in the background.You can check out all their leathers, pigskins, cowhides and suedes here. 


They generously gave me some leathers and two patterns to give away! Check out the details at the bottom of this post.

Karen Brow of Java House Quilts designs beautiful applique patterns like this block-of-the-month set called Cat Acatemy. She has a lot of patterns featuring animals – cats, dogs, frogs, turtles, and fish.

A shop owner in Halloween garb places and order for AURIfil thread with Alex Veronelli. The AURIfil team’s melodic Italian accents are so wonderful to hear drifting out of their booth!

The Italian design sense is very evident in these beautiful AURIfil thread display cases. And look at that shine on the long-staple Egyptian cotton in their Cotton Mako threads. It is one of the reasons I’m such a fan of AURIfil for both hand needleturn applique and hand quilting, and thread sketching and machine quilting.

Here I am with the AURIfil team (from left): Alex Veronelli, Elena Gregotti, me, and Davide Moro. I’ve been asked to joint the AURIfil designers’ team, and will have some exciting stuff coming up for you next year on their website.

Ruth Chandler and Liz Kettle

Fabric Embellishing: The Basics & Beyond was a collaboration between fiber artists Liz Kettle (above right), Heather Thomas, Ruth Chandler (above left) and Lauren Vlcek. It came out earlier this year and is already in its third printing! Liz is holding a new book that came out in August, Threads: The Basics and Beyond, which is described as “a complete visual guide to thread techniques and creativity.”

Tula Pink (left) is a young designer for Moda, and this is one of her designs. It was quilted by the woman named Angela (shown on the right) and I am embarrassed to say that I neglected to get her last name. But her quilting is amazing!

Here’s a closeup shot of Angela’s quilting. Isn’t it fabulous? What a great motif to fill in the “negative space” around the print fabrics, and add wonderful texture and visual interest. 

Make sure to check out Tula Pink’s blog post about the copyright infringement of her fabrics that showed up in WalMart. This is happening a lot to many designers, and it is something to think about when you purchase fabric. And did you know that most fabric designers make only pennies on each yard of the fabrics they design? When their designs get knocked off, they make nothing. :-(

I took a sashiko class on Saturday morning from Pepper Cory, who is also from North Carolina. She is a quilt maker, author, and quilting teacher. An excellent teacher, I thought. She is coming to teach and speak at my local guild in 2011!

A sample of Pepper’s sashiko work

I do many different kinds of handwork, but had never tried this before. Sashiko is a kind of Japanese decorative embroidery most often done on indigo fabrics with heavy off-white cotton thread. Pepper made it look easy. It wasn’t. You have to make perfect, even stitches of a specific length, with a certain amount of space in between each stitch, and there are rules about how to handle corners and crossing lines. But I really enjoyed it. It is always a nice break to sit and do some hand stitching in the middle of the chaos that is Quilt Market.

 

In Pepper’s class, we used beautiful indigo fabric made in India and distributed by Dunroven House. Imagine my surprise to find out that they are based in my hometown of Mooresville, North Carolina! Joe and Jenna DeMarco (above) showed me their line of homespuns, kitchen and table linens, and the indigos. You can see more of their products here. 

This is some of Dunroven House’s homespun line. They have an outlet store only a few miles from my home that is open the first Friday and Saturday of the month, and I am headed there soon!  

GIVEAWAY! Would you like to win a copy of Bella Nonna’s FuddleSnugs pattern (above)?

Or their 21 Leather Projects pattern (and the assortment of gilded leathers and suedes shown above)? Then just leave a comment on this post before noon EST on Thursday, November 11. I'll pick two winners, one for each pattern, so let me know in your comment which one you’d like if you win. 

I’m going to keep giving away Quilt Market loot in my next few posts, so please come back for another chance to win! 

WE HAVE A WINNER (actually two!): Victorious Vixen and Katrina won the giveaways.