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Filtering by Tag: Hideaway
This week we were featured on Be@Home, a blog that showcases people with a passion for cross-stitching, sewing, quilting, and playing with different fabrics. It's part of a larger blog called Pocket Change which brings together several niche shopping blogs all into one area. Which is cool!
Why "Almost Famous" you ask? Well...we were just featured in the Summer edition of Quilts and More! Which is awesome...So go get one!
You can find our article entitled "Made in the Shade" on page 78... and it includes both the instructions and diagrams needed to make our Lamp Quilt that we submitted to them a few months ago...
And then for the second half of this entry... My sister, Carrie, has been promoted (within our little company)! To photographer... Whoohoo!
(I've found that my day job really gets in the way of my extracurricular job because by the time I get home around 6:30... it's a little too dark for picture taking. So that's where Carrie comes in.)
As you can imagine, we are all really pumped that our lamp quilt was featured in a magazine. And true to Jung form, we wanted it well documented with copious amounts of pictures. Carrie gave it her best shot with her iphone, but it quickly became apparent that that wasn't going to cut it.... So she's now the proud new owner of a Sony a390... which she LOVES... and so does her husband, Jon, who's been fighting for a chance to experiment with it.... and in his free time he's been nerding things up with the instruction manual.
But I think they were very thorough, to say the least, with the the shots that they sent over...
(See above picture of Carrie pretending to be a hobo.)
I think this would qualify as "thinking outside of the box". Ha.
(And if you also direct your attention to the second set of photos... the magazine spreads were photographed in a bush... while, very cleverly, sitting "in the shade"...)
Get it?
Like the magazine title?
So this is our third free pattern for our Hideaway line, and it's officially up and ready for download on our Free Patterns Page on our website here!
(And you can download it directly here.)
We think it's a nice one because it's relatively easy... and it's a fun way to use the entire line. It consists of 30 identical blocks that follow the Ohio Star pattern. (I've also seen this star called the Maryland Star as well as the Sawtooth Star.)
Anyway, when it's done with a more traditionally themed color palette... where all of the stars are identical, it will definitely give off that more traditional feel. But when it's created in the more scrappy technique... as shown here, it winds up creating a really nice mosaic-y feel. It becomes more intricate and the stars evolve into more of a secondary feature... rather than being a dominating visual element.
We hope you like it!!
On a side note, I know that it's difficult to find an entire line sometimes... because most stores won't generally buy entire collections. But if you're looking to create a quilt like this using our Hideaway line here are a list of stores that I've found online that are carrying the full line:
And finally, on yet another sidenote... We've just put up our new website... which I guess should be considered a work in progress, because there are still a number of things that we'd like to add. One of these things is a Where to Buy Page. So, I'll be putting together a list of stores that I find through Google, but if you'd like to email me a link to your store, I'd be happy to include you on this page. Just give me an idea of what you'll be carrying... like if you'll have the whole line... and if you're planning on doing any kits. (Because if you are doing kits, I'd love to post an entry about them... as well as provide access to your store through our website. I have a lot of people emailing me about kits, but I haven't come across any so far.)
I recently received a series of emails from several friends and family... telling me to check out the newest post on the Moda Bake Shop that uses Hideaway...
Julie Sebire (of "Narioka" Australia) was the creator of her beautiful Cabins in the Hills quilt tutorial/recipe... which seriously blew me away!
For those of you who don't know about the Moda Bake Shop, I'll give you a brief rundown... Its basically a blog that has weekly submissions from sewers/crafters/quilters all over the world who have created a quilt or some other kind of sewing project using any of Moda's "precuts" (e.g. JELLY ROLLS: 2 ½ ” x 45” strips of fabric, LAYER CAKES: 10” x 10” squares of fabric, HONEY BUNS: 1 ½ ” x 45” strips of fabric... etc.).
The whole idea is really pretty cool because each of their precuts are named after some kind of baked good... an idea that is then extended into the rest of their naming conventions: each submission/set of instructions is known as a "recipe", the designers are referred to as "chefs", and the web page that features their array of precuts is known as the "bakery".
Anyway, back to Julie and why I think her entry is so completely spectacular...
I've found that fabric is very much like any other artistic medium... you can give ten different people some clay and a wheel... and the pottery that results will be so unexpected... and so unique to each particular creator, that you never really know what you're going to get.
Ten different quilters/sewers/crafters can all use the same line of fabric in their projects... yet, they'll still manage to come up with a wildly diverse set of creations... creations that always seem to amaze me because of the way that same grouping of prints can evolve... and become transformed from designer to designer...
For example... we created mainly appliqué patterns to show off this line because the prints are rather small and intricate... and they do especially well in that type of application. But when you view those same prints in a very traditional style, such as this... they really take on an entirely different look and feel. The colors interact with each other in strange ways... which, to me, has sort of a kaleidoscope-y feel (if that makes any sense at all)... Ha.
And so... all that's to say, you should check out her entry on the Moda Bake Shop here. As well as her blog, Narioka, here, which has some really fun ideas. Plus, she has quite the eye, when it comes to photography! When I saw her pictures up on the Bake Shop I emailed her right away about using them on our blog! I LOVE it when people go picture-crazy after finishing up a project. Whenever I finish something up, I'll wind up with photos of it in the grass, in the trees, propped on old cars... hanging out windows... Sometimes I'll take it with me to work and explore the various photo ops there as well. The whole process will usually take hours, but it's just so darn fun to flip through the pictures later!
Which reminds me, if any of you have a fun set of photos that features a project that you've made with some of our fabric, shoot me an email! I'd love to show them off for you!
The Windowbox Pillow was the featured pillow on our recent bloghop with Moda, but the Cuckoo Pillow is super cool too...
If you're interested in downloading the instructions for our Cuckoo Pillow Pattern... I've just uploaded it to our website so that you all can get it as a PDF. To download it directly, click here. If you want to check out all of our free patterns that are available for download, you can visit our Free Patterns Page here.
This pattern would totally work with other fabric lines too, but I think that it's neat how Hideaway became our jumping off point for its design, because in it, you'll see that the cuckoo house, the little bird, as well as the tree that we've appliquéd on the back, all can be found in our Damask print.
We were actually told to keep the cuckoo clocks to a minimum... so this fabric is the only one that has the actual clock in its entirety. Which you can see below.
The Damask took a truly ridiculous amount of time to draw up. But I love it!
It gives me butterflies!
My mom and I really enjoy including fun little surprises, so I've gone ahead and labeled most of said surprises in the diagram below. I think it's probably obvious that the cuckoo clock was our central theme... which you can see here in the center of each repeat. But we did try to take this further by exploring some of the more subtle aspects of this visual style. The stand on which the clock sits... turns into an abstracted set of deer antlers... And out of these antlers grow 6 trees, two sprigs of pine cones, and some small, folky-styled flowers.
Since we were shooting for a line that was Swiss inspired... we drew some of our inspiration from Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs (small circular signs that the Amish / farmers in the area will hang on their barns to ward off bad luck). My mom grew up in Amish Country PA... And I'm now living very close to that area myself... so it was easy to become intrigued by this charming style of illustration. (Not to mention the fact that I will often times buy into these odd superstitions myself.) The birds that make up one of the main focal points in this print are known as the Distelfink, a.k.a. the gold finch... and in Amish culture, they symbolize good luck and happiness.
Beneath our pair of Distelfinks are some little eggs sitting within a stylized nest which we've embellished with a series of clock hands on either side. Directly above the birds is a heart (another token Hex sign symbol) within which is a small keyhole from which a little cuckoo bird is popping out its head. There are also some clock pendulums that are swinging beneath this heart.
The final little surprise is our spiderweb hidden in some of the branches. We decided in our first line that we wanted to have a secret little "Easter Egg"... and that has since become our spiderwebs that we try to cleverly work into a few patterns in each of our lines. If you want to read the entire story on these, you can check out our Easter Egg entry here... In both Botany and Hideaway you can find them in three separate patterns each.
And I think that's about all I've got for this one! I hope you all enjoy!
Ohh! And if anyone has tried to contact me through our Contact Us page on our website and you haven't heard back from me... that would be because our contact page has been a tad broken these last few weeks. I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is, but in the meantime, please contact me using the contact link here on our blog (the blue button at the very top of the page (after you've clicked on the "L+J Blog" title up at the top).
