New Fabrics Galore!

Bushels of exciting fabrics are arriving! So much new and inspiring things to sew with--we can't even handle it!

Sarah Watts' Timber & Leaf collection is a fantastic menagerie of forest friends. Caitlin has already whipped up pillowcases for her bed from the fawn in birch print and Melissa has just started a foxy dress as well!

Alexander Henry's Mecca Modern fabrics are bright and retro and so adorable!

Aneela Hoey's sweet as pie Posy collection features darling bunnies and friendly chickens and little girls who love to read.

We also have Posy charm packs and mini-charms!

Denyse Schmidt's Shelburne Falls fabrics are here and, once again, Denyse has created a stunning, vintage inspired collection with prints perfect for patchwork and garments. This collection would make a beautiful pyramid quilt!

We have all sorts of precuts in Shelburne Falls for patchwork fun. Charm packs and layer cakes and jelly rolls and fat quarters...

Jaime and I will be attending Quiltcon this month and are thrilled to be taking a class with Denyse herself! You can bet we are already working on some new garments made from Shelburne Falls to wear to class. Stay tuned to see what we learn and make while attending workshops later this month!

New Angora Bunny Wool!

Fluffy clouds of soft angora bunny fiber is here! This locally raised angora is from a small fleet of bunnies right here in Denver.

Natural Angora Colors: White  |  Tort  |  Agouti  |  Blue  |  Black

Twelve cute French angora rabbits owned by Peggy Pearlman provided us with this rainbow of five natural colors. Handspinners, this is one amazingly soft fiber! Angora is super warm and insulating and can be blended with other fibers to add a sweet halo to your handspun--or you can spin it all by itself for an amazing yarn.

Emily has been spinning some 100% Angora yarn in the natural Agouti color. She is knitting it into what will be a beautiful Shetland-style shawl with a lace edging in Tort.

Emily's handspun 100% angora Shetland shawl in progress

Her fiber came from her own adorable bunny, Ms. Queen Victoria. (Branwyn the shop dog's sister!)

Queen Victoria the Angora Bunny with her sister, Branwyn

They are best friends!

Wee Woodland, Nest and Lovely Morning!

New fabrics are here--and if you like a dose of cute animals with your fabrics you'll want to come check them out!

Wee Woodland by Keiki is filled with strangely adorable illustrations of rabbits, llamas, snails and birds. We have this collection in pre-cut jelly rolls, charm packs and layer cakes for patchwork fun. Wee Woodland cotton flannels are on their way, too!


Valori Wells' Nest fabrics feature pretty birds and botanicals.


Lovely Mornings by Hoodie features roosters, chicks, cute fruits and mushrooms. Who can resist these perfect mushrooms?

New Cute Craft Supplies From Around the Globe!

New Japanese felting supplies are here! Most of these so-adorable-they-can-only-be-Japanese crafting kits, books and tools now have instructions translated into English, for more fun and less "say what?".


Felt ball makers are back! These sweet felting tools flew out of here last time we got them in. They make perfect little wet-felted wool balls with ease!


This new felting book is cute as cute can be!


And from Germany, the land where magically self-patterning sock yarn originates, Ambiente yarn is here! These little balls of sock yarns come in the prettiest colors which transform into a faux Fair-Isle pattern of stripes and speckles as you knit. You may know, we are all about making shawls out of our sock yarn around here, so keep your eye out for some Ambiente shawl action!

Estes Park Wool Festival Report: 2010

Fancyporters Emily and Cat visited the 2010 Estes Park Wool Fest this year to check out the cute and woolly madness. And they did not come home empty handed--we are happy to welcome Queen Victoria, baby English angora rabbit, to team Fancy Tiger Crafts! Shop dog Branwyn is excited about sharing her customer greeting and cuddle receiving duties with Queen Victoria when her new sister gets a little older. For more on the Wool Festival fun here is Cat and Emily!

Cat

Hello! In spite of the cold, rain and mud, Emily and I had a great time at the Estes Park Wool Fest. We fell in love with the angora bunnies, especially Queen Victoria (little lady on the left above), but there were so many other super cute creatures to look at as well!

This cashmere goat loved the camera! And how adorable is the girl in her green knitted cap?


Lambs and llamas and goats, oh my! Here are just some of the animals we met at the festival. The Southdown Babydoll lamb's face (top left below) was just like velvet. Her wool was thick and heavy with lanolin. We're considering getting Amber one for her next birthday...their insanely cute smiley faces make Southdowns sheep her favorite!


Daybreak alert! We saw several folks sporting their Daybreak shawls, one of our favorite knitting patterns by Stephen West. This lovely lady stopped to pose for us in the rain.


In addition to the sheep, goats, llamas and bunnies there were also yaks. This little guy was just five days-old. His family is starting to bottle feed him to keep him really sweet and tame. What a cutie!

Emily

Hey guys, Emily here! The picture below is Queen Victoria--taken at the exact moment that Cat and I realized that we were in love. We tried so hard to resist the gravitational pull of Victoria's cuteness! We actually left the festival, went to get coffee, and realized in a panic that we had to go back and bring home our little queen. She is from Backyard Rabbit Burrows where Cassi Swanson breeds angora rabbits, the most magical of little fiber animals.


Soon we will go visit Backyard Rabbit Burrows. Cassie has a new batch of baby bunnies and Victoria has dreams of finding her Albert. We'll keep you posted when that happens!

Thanks Cat and Emily! And, thanks, cute woolly fiber animals that came out to Estes Park!

Estes Park Wool Festival 2009

Jaime and I had a super fantastic time in Estes Park last weekend at the Wool Festival! We were real excited about cuddling with all the adorable animals and checking out all the locally produced goods.

The Angora rabbits were first on our cuddle list. They were irresistible! We ended up buying a few bags of fairy-soft angora fluff from Woodlake Woolies. We hope to bring some of their angora fiber into our fiber loft soon!

Next stop--cute goats! Or could they be baby unicorns? Look at how pastoral they are with their curly locks and magical baby faces!

The highlight of the trip was being reunited with our favorite lamb, Diamond Lil. First we had to fight our way through crowds of her admirers.

We were lucky enough to be asked by our friends Peg and Woody to lamb-sit Diamond Lil' while they showed their Shetlands. Lil' was getting really sleepy in our laps watching the show. She was a little bigger, but she was still the smallest, cuddliest lamb in the barn!

We were super excited about the presence of Gotland sheep at this year's wool market. Gotlands are an ancient Swedish breed of sheep who were made famous by the Lord of the Rings films - it was Gotland wool that was used to make all of the Elvin invisibility cloaks. There are very few Gotlands here in the US (mostly they live in New Zealand today) so we were super-lucky to meet them. They were so pretty with their lustrous grey locks! Jaime and I acquired some sweet Oregon-made Gotland yarn and Jaime is already planning her invisibility cloak-lette. We hope to stock some Gotland yarn and roving soon for all of your Elvin needs. Nerd alert!

Here are some other highlights from the animal side of the festival - from top left moving clockwise: a Jacob sheep with totally sweet horns, a sleepy Wensleydale sheep, the leaping llama competition, a close up of Diamond Lil's adorable wool, the craziness of showing 7 Shetland lambs, and a freaked out Wensleydale!

Of course we had to visit the vendor barn - this is where you can buy everything from a whole fleece to hand-carved drop spindles. One of our favorite booths at the wool fest is Stephania's naturally hand-dyed rovings and yarns. Jaime had a tough time deciding, but ended up choosing a really pretty madder and tesu flower dyed corriedale.

Thanks Estes! We've got our fiber fix for the summer!

Quilt Market Report (Part II): Is the quilt world ready for Jay McCarroll?

You may know Jay McCarroll - he is the winner of the first season of Project Runway and has been taking the fashion world (and Bravo TV) by storm ever since. He debuted his new collection of quilting cottons for Westminster fibers at the Quilt Market. We are totally excited about his fabrics (which will be here in March), but I'm not sure the quilt world is ready for him. Our Westminster rep referred to him as "er, Jay Smith?" when showing us the line, and when Jay won an award for best new booth, he was announced as "Jay Caroline". Hopefully everyone will learn his name because his fabrics are super adorable. Jay was super friendly and we can't wait to get his fabrics in!




This is a picture of Jay's inspiration for his collection, which is titled "Woodland Wonders". We love it. One bunny lost his ear in transport. Sad bunny.