Fresh, Pretty Fabrics!

Loads of lovely spring fabrics are here, including three new collections that have all of us at Fancy swooning...

Mixteca from illustrator Eleanor Grosch is crisp and bold with hot colors and geometrics inspired by Native American motifs. Mixteca is part of Cloud 9 Organic's price-sensitive line, which means this eco-friendly fabric runs about the same price as conventionally grown cotton prints. How can you resist that!

Marisa of Creative Thursday just released her new collection, Locally Grown, full of adorable farmy goodness, like sheep, goats, chickens and tomatoes. We see Locally Grown knitting project bags in our future!

2wenty Thr3e by Eric and Julie Comstock is here and we are loving the soft modern palette of mustard, clementine, rose and grey. Vintage camera illustrations and nostalgic ticket stubs? Yes.

See you soon!

New Organic Prints by Michelle Engel Bencsko + Michéle Brummer Everett

Two new organic collections are here from Cloud 9 fabrics!

Michelle Engel Bencsko's new collection, Simpatico, is bold geometrics portrayed in pastel colors. We met up with Michelle at Quilt Market and she was wearing a Wiksten Tova made from one of the Simpatico half-square triangle prints--it was the hottest thing ever!

Michéle Brummer Everett's Seven Seas collection is an adorable take on a nautical theme, with her fantastic illustrations of animal friends from the high seas! This ocean print with a happy narwhal is so cute it almost makes me cry!

 

Happy sewing!

Quilt Market Report Spring 2012

Amber and I just got back from Kansas City for the Spring Quilt Market! This is where we get to shop for all the amazing fabrics and patterns we carry here at the store. We also get to meet and talk to fabric designers, pattern designers, bloggers and other shop owners. It was super amazing and we were really impressed with the strength of the new collections. Here are some highlights:

Amy Butler has a new collection coming out this July, Cameo. Her booth was a beautiful mix of vintage with her bright prints forming a fun contrast.

Anna Maria Horner's newest collection for Free Spirit is Field Study due in August. Natural elements such as feathers, flora and fauna inspire these designs. We loved the life-sized crouching leopard decoupaged with fabric!

Can you believe this quilt?! The pattern for this strip-pieced quilt by Anna Maria Horner will be available as a free pattern for her Field Study fabrics through the Free Spirit website. I can hardly wait to make one - it was stunning.

We really love what's going on over at Cloud 9. This organic fabric company started out so tiny and is growing into the most adorable fabric company of all time. Their current and upcoming collections are awesome, and they keep working with amazing artists. We have Monsterz in stock now so here is some inspiration with these awesome baby quilts.

Seven Seas is another Michele Brummer Everett collection for Cloud 9 coming out this summer. More of her adorable drawings, but this time with a maritime theme. Those little boys shirts are too cute!

We were thrilled that Denyse Schmidt had her first ever booth at quilt market. Her booth was amazing and featured an inspiration wall for her upcoming collection, Chicopee. We went ahead and ordered the full collection so you are all set come August.

We also got to see all of her quilts from her newest book in person - talk about inspiration! Meeting Denyse was awesome - she was lovely and it was so magical to chat with one of our favorite quilters.

The buzz of quilt market was the new Liberty of London quilting cottons. Quilt Market was the debut of this new venture for Liberty and we think it's going to be amazing! Their first collection is called Bloomsbusy Gardens and each of the 11 prints comes in 5 colorways. We ordered a ton of it, so you can quilt with Liberty to your heart's content come late August. The Liberty quilting cottons will be much more affordable than their Tana Lawn counterparts, but you can expect the same great designs and colors.

Melody Miller had a booth! Yay! Her booth was a perfect picture of her unique, vintage-inspired style and highlighted her newest collection for Kokka, Ruby Star Vinyl.

We couldn't resist a photo-op with the lady herself!

Oh Tula Pink. So much awesome fabric and I can't believe this Gem quilt!! Tula Pink has another new collection hitting the shop in July called The Birds and The Bees. We love the bright colors, but mostly I can't wait to get my hands on it so I can make this quilt.

Here we are with Ms. Pink in front of this amazing Gem Quilt. Looks pretty good, right?

And now here are some sneak peeks from the land-of-all-awesome-Japanese-fabric, Seven Islands! There will be a new Echino collection coming out featuring birds and animals, our favorite. I couldn't get over the giraffes and owls in ornate frames and of course the hipster deer-in-glasses polka dot print. The zebras are looking pretty hot too. We ordered all of it and several laminates so don't worry - there will be plenty to choose from.

Fancy Tiger favorite, Nani Iro, has a new collection out as well. She is working with some new and different colors and designs that we are excited about.

Finally we will leave you with this double gauze tunic - we need to make this!

Lots of great stuff is on the way - we didn't even show you the new Lizzy House, Moda, Sarah Jane, Lotta Jansdotter, Bari J., Dear Stella, Blend or Alexander Henry fabrics! OMG so much awesome stuff to sew!

Two New Organic Fabric Lines!

New Julia Rothman Miscellany organic fabrics are here! We love Julia's hand drawn illustrations and can't wait to make quilts and shirts and bags out of her fabric line from organic fabric company, Cloud 9. It's part of their price-sensitive collection, which means these prints are just a couple dollars more than our conventionally grown cotton fabrics. Come by soon if you would like some--they are flying out the door!

Storyboek, the newest organic collection from Birch Fabrics, is a sweet and imaginative collection inspired by childrens stories. The soft colors, adorable animals, 100% organic cotton and eco-friendly, low impact dyes make these fabrics the perfect choice for sewing projects for a special baby!

There are so many fantastic organic fabrics out now, and in order to make them easier to find we have rearranged things and dedicated a whole section of the store to organic cotton prints. Come by to see all the earth-friendly goodness!

New Heather Moore Organic Fabrics!

Cloud 9 Fabrics is a two-woman company known for their adorably designed, eco-friendly organic cotton prints. We love that as they've grow they are beginning to print collections from independent designers. The first in the series is Cut Out and Keep from South African illustrator Heather Moore.

We love the graphic prints and the earthy colors palette!

Amber's Fairytale Baby Quilt

I've been waiting to share this quilt because I had to keep it under wraps until my little niece was born! My sister-in-law just had her first baby and I just made my first ever baby quilt for her. (I've only made queen sized quilts before!)

I'm especially proud of this little quilt since it is the first time I've quilted the layers together myself. I usually send larger quilts out to a long arm quilter. Since this one was small enough to quilt on my home sewing machine I decided to give it a go. With some tips and encouragement from our quilting instructor, Jessica, everything went smoothly. I quilted it by stitching along the seams of the patchwork, stitch-in-the-ditch style.

The adorable prints of Heather Ross's Far, Far Away collection inspired me, full of imagery from fairy tales. I added a Kokka storybook print, Echino and Isso Ecco fabrics. There are altogether six stories in the quilt. Can you find them all?

The back of the quilt is a soft organic cotton flannel from Cloud 9. Perfect for wrapping cute babies up in. Welcome, darling sweet girl!

So Much New Fabric!

We've been busy getting some exciting new fabric collections out in the shop! Here's the low-down on what's new...

Cloud 9 Fabrics and Birch Fabrics are two amazing companies that focus solely on organic prints. We love being able to carry 100% organic cotton printed with low-impact dyes. To top off the awesomeness both companies support independent designers!

Cloud 9 Nature Walk

Birch Fabrics Marine

Birch Fabrics Circa 60 Beach Mod

Ty Pennington's Impressions quilting cottons and home dec fabrics are here! This is a huge collection and the prints are all really beautiful and well designed. We love the color palette with its chartreuse, coral, charcoal and soft grey-blues.


Jane Sasseman's new Garden Divas fabrics are bold and bright. We love the way she illustrates flowers and insects and birds, almost like stained glass windows or paper cutouts.


Denyse Schmidt's Greenfield Hill collection is a little bit 50s and a little bit goth. We are imagining some amazing mens shirts out of some of these prints...more on that soon.


And I will end with some of my favorite new fabrics. I am a sucker for prints of tossed cute things. This mish-mash of new fabrics is from all different companies. Can you even handle the kitten heads?


Happy sewing!

Fall 2010 International Quilt Market Report!

Amber and I were just in the lovely state of Texas attending the Fall Quilt Market. This is where we get to preview and order new fabric collections, find new pattern companies, and look for any other sewing/quilting related products we can find. Here are some of our highlights:


There are all sorts of famous crafty people at Quilt Market--we were super-excited to run into Meg McElwee who designs and owns Sew Liberated patterns. We love her Schoolhouse Tunic pattern. Amber happened to be wearing one of her Schoolhouse Tunics which Meg spotted right away. She was so nice and looked adorable wearing the original Schoolhouse Tunic which you may recognize from the pattern cover.


Amy Butler's booth is always filled with inspiration and ideas! She was showing off her highly anticipated collection, Soul Blossoms, at the market and we can hardly wait to get these fabrics in this December.


We always love visiting the Seven Islands booth. Seven Islands distributes fabric from Japan so we order all sorts of amazing-ness from them. This market, they were debuting a new line from our favorite Japanese designer, Etsuko Furuya, who designs all the Echino prints. Her new collection is as colorful and striking as ever and we even ordered laminates of it! Here we are with her and a weirdly cute deer mannequin.


Seven Islands was also debuting a new designer, Melody Miller, who has a 60's inspired collection coming out for Kokka. We love the interesting colors and the vintage kitsch designs. Check out the impressive explosion of Kokka sewn goods on display!


We also picked up some new Japanese sewing kits to make these precious creatures. How can you resist?! These are available now to purchase in the store and include English translation.


Hokkoh is another Japanese company that does some crazy prints! We loved the candy they offered to keep us going--too-cute Mameki Neko cat candies.


Michael Miller had some awesome new prints coming out - our favorite were reproductions from mid-century designer, Tammis Keefe. We ordered so much fabric from Michael Miller that I got to spend 30 seconds in their "wind-of-fortune" room. This experience made me really glad I've never been a game show contestant. I did manage to collect enough dollars to win 2 charm packs from their upcoming "Bonnes Amies" collection!


We love the embroidery patterns from Penguin and Fish and were pleased to see Alyssa is coming out with new dog embroidery patterns. These fancy embroidery patterns are just available in a few breeds, but we can hardly wait to get them in stock, they are soo cute. She also has a new sewing pattern out for a sweet alligator toy.


FreeSpirit Fabrics are really killing it this season. They have so many great designers and collections we can hardly contain our excitement! We are absolutely loving the new collection from Tula Pink. Parisville is a fantasy explosion of ships, hidden mice, geometric dot damasks and lion wigs. It is really inspiring us and we will be sure to post when we receive it!


Ms. Pink herself was delightful as she shared with us stories of living on her hundreds-of-acres ranch in small-town Missouri. Her booth was beautiful and really showed off the Parisville collection.


Jay McCarroll's new collection and is very different from his first two and we love his new direction. Habitat is really fashion-oriented and are dreaming of sewing up tops, skirts, and dresses out of these prints. Nice work, Jay!

Anna Maria Horner was there promoting her newest collection, Innocent Crush. We just received all of the home dec, cotton velveteens and voiles from this collection and it was great to get inspired by her booth. Anna Maria is always pushing the envelope with her fabric choices. Last year she brought us her beautiful voiles and this year we are excited to be carrying her cotton velvelteens. These fabrics are super soft and we love that they are made of natural cotton! Ms. Horner also had some bias tape made up from the collection and we really hope this goes to production so we can carry it! Anna Maria spotted me from afar in my brand new Innocent Crush top and so of course we had to stop for a photo-op.


Ty Pennington of TLC's Trading Spaces and ABC's Extreme Makeover is expanding into the world of fabric design. His collection for Westminster was the talk of the show and he was swamped with eager fans getting autographs.


Some of the smaller fabrics companies are our favorite ones to visit at quilt market. We get to talk with the people who are designing and manufacturing their own fabrics. Birch is one of these companies and it was so great to meet Cynthia, the woman behind it all. Cynthia and her husband, Jason, collaborated on their newest collection, Avalon. We know you will love the bicycles and birds - together at last!


Another small but amazing company is Cloud 9 Organics. Cloud 9 is introducing 3 new collections by 3 new designers - Heather Moore, Julia Rothman and Geninne Zlatkis. Each of these designers has a very distinct style and we are looking forward to these more sophisticated and grown up collections from Cloud 9.


Last, but not least, we got to meet Lizzy House! Lizzy is the designer behind the Castle Peeps collection and has another new collection on the way. She was adorable and sweet and we are excited to get to know her better. That's right, Lizzy will be in Denver next Spring so stay tuned for uber-exciting-hang-out-crafting-action!


I know you all are probably as excited as we are about the new fabrics! Most of these will be coming out starting in January and then throughout the beginning of the year into spring. We can all look forward to tons of amazing sewing projects in 2011!