December 19, 2014

Happy Holidays!


Wishing you all a very happy and healthy holiday season and a spectacular new year! Extra special cheer from:
Loudolph
Franny Bells
Roscoe Claus

Lots of fun things to come in 2015, including...eh hem...some more content here on the blog ;)

Thank you so much for your support throughout the year.

Quilters — keep an eye out here, on Instagram (@katespain), our Facebook page, and on Twitter (@KateSpainDesign) for my Paradiso fabric and pattern previews and pre-release giveaways! Also, be sure to take advantage of my "Free Patterns" — just click on the highlighted link shown with each.  They are my gift to you...all year long!

xo,
Kate



November 18, 2014

Season of Thanks: Thank You Vera!


As we near Thanksgiving, I like to pay extra attention to the many things for which I am thankful.

I’m thankful for many of the outstanding companies I’ve had the good fortune to work with, including Moda Fabrics/United Notions and CHF Industries, to name just two.

CHF manufactures and markets quilted bedding featuring my designs. You can find the bedding online at Macys.com and other retailers. Thank you to many of you who have spread the word about the bedding collections and purchased them. I am grateful for your support. In no small part, your support has contributed to CHF continuing to work with me on three new lines for March 2015 release for Macys and other retailers.

How I got going with CHF is another example of, first, never losing hope and, second, always trying to be prepared in case what you hope for comes calling … even years after you first pursued it.

Back in 2009, I began looking for bedding companies to license my designs to. At the top of my list was CHF Industries. I greatly admired the variety and quality of CHF's offerings and thought my designs might add a little something. We reached out to CHF in 2009 and again in 2010, with no response. This happens a lot to me, so I tried elsewhere...never quite finding the right fit. 

Fast forward to the spring of 2013, when out-of-the-blue, I received an unexpected note from Katy at CHF. She was the same person I’d written to 4 years before and she was now interested in seeing some of my latest designs for bedding.

Since then I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with CHF and Katy. They're a wonderful group of dedicated, creative, humorous and hard-working people, whom I have developed a deep regard for. I am grateful beyond words to work alongside everyone there.

And you can imagine how fun it was when I learned from Katy that her stepmom Vera is an avid quilter! So of course we sent Vera a mix of Central Park fabrics to enjoy this summer. 

Another happy surprise arrived in my e-mail last week: A note from Katy with photos of Vera's "Marigold" quilt made with the fabrics I'd sent her. It's beautiful!!
I was so tickled by Vera’s creation that I asked Vera to share with us a little bit about her “Marigold” quilt, her Manatee Patchworkers group in Bradenton, FL, and about herself. 

Take it away, Vera! And keep an eye out for another package. :) 

About Marigold:

I created Marigold from the yellows, oranges, and greens of the Central Park fabric collection. As I had a limited supply of the out-of-production Central Park fabrics, I supplemented with a few coordinating blenders from my stash. 

To create Marigold, I used the Chopped Blocktutorial from Missouri Quilt Company

Marigold is 64”x54, uses bamboo silk blend batting, and includes large blocks of Central Park fabric on the back. I stippled Marigold on my 18” HandiQuilter using a very fine platinum polyester thread.

I plan to make a baby quilt from the Central Park pinks and blues. To extend my stashes variety, I located some Central Park nickles on-line. Marigold and the yet unnamed baby quilt will be entered into the Florida State Fair in January. Afterward, both will be given away, and all remaining Central Park will go to my guilds charity stash. 

About Manatee Patchworkers:

Manatee Patchworkers began as a small group meeting at a private home in 1982, was chartered by the National Quilters Association in March 1983, and held their first quilt show in late 1983. The quild held an annual quilt show until 1994 then switched to bi-annual shows. Today the guild has over 100 members.

Manatee Patchworkers exists to serve the community and to further quilt education. Current service projects include creating 40”x 50” quilts for Manatee County police, quilts for cancer patients, 700 Christmas placemats for Meals on Wheels, and Christmas gifts for our local Salvation Army shelter residents. 

Our outreach to the Manatee County police is called Quilts for Cruisers. This program provides the county police with a stash of 'cuddle quilts' they give to distressed children who must be removed from their home or any crime scene. We provide over 175 quilts per year to Quilts for Cruisers. This program has been so successful, a sister quild in Sarasota County has adopted it.

To create the huge number of community service items, we make kits members can pick up and return at meetings. We also hold monthly and, as needed, special work days. We have members who like to specialize in one aspect, such as binding or quilting, and those members complete multiple items each month.

The turnover rate on the Patchworkers charity stash is high!

About me:

I am a retired IT engineer, currently living in Florida. 

I began making doll clothes when I was six years old. By high school I made most all my dresses, skirts, and blouses. I've sewn garments for my children, my grandchildren, and made bridal wear for family and clients. I've also made decorator items such as window treatments, slipcovers, and pillow for myself, family, and clients. 

I began quilting 12 years ago. I enjoy it so much I purchased my first frame and head in 2005. I've made about 70 quilts for myself, friends, and family. I pieced 8 and quilted over 30 charity quilts in 2014. 

I recently became a great-grandmother. With several grandchildren reaching maturity, several weddings and a family population boom is coming. I've started planning wedding quilts, and established a completed baby and juvenile quilt stash. Loving the colors in the Horizon collection, I recently purchased a nickle to use in a baby quilt. 

My husband loves my quilting passion. He says I can get many, many hours of entertainment from one yard of fabric, and the worst that is going to happen is I may stick myself with a needle.

I love honing my quilting skills and hope to leave a lasting quilt legacy
for my family.


October 14, 2014

Franny Caption "Horizon" and "Paradiso" Winner ... and Pillow Winner

"Thanks a lot. You made me giggle!" -- Franny 

Franny liked all of your humorous captions! But ultimately, she couldn't select just one caption. So what did Franny do? After diligent deliberation, including eliciting input from her brother Lou (unfortunately, that rascal Roscoe was in a timeout) and her beloved Twister game ...
Franny turned to our office’s official Magic 8 Ball®, which indicated "Ask again later." Oh no, poor Franny! And so, she pointed her browser to randomizer.org.

By random selection, the winner is: Nicola Arnold

Congratulations! A layer cake of Horizon and charm pack of Paradiso will be in the mail as soon as we receive your mailing address at info@katespain.com

And congratulations to Sarah Grady Craig!


We tried something new on Facebook. We asked people to post a photo of their Kate-designed quilted bedding. Sarah did. And we loved her photo! Thanks, Sarah. A pillow from shopkatespain.com is on its way to you.


And, just a reminder, today is the ...
1. Last Day to receive 20% off pillows, out-of-print quilting fabrics, handmade rugs, kitchen textiles, and my hand-signed prints at shopkatespain.com  w/ free shipping to US 48. Just use code "Oct20" at checkout.
2. Last Day to purchase the Moda Fabrics Horizon collection designed by Kate from the Fat Quarter Shop to be eligible for the Fat Quarter Shop's amazing $100 gift card giveaway for a video review of Horizon fabric purchased from FQS. Giveaway details here. #FQSLovesHorizon

3. ... the day on which, in 1066, William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings.


October 10, 2014

Paradiso Peeks & Photo Caption Contest

Hi everyone! I've been busily getting ready for Quilt Market and wanted to share some photos of my new fabric collection, Paradiso, with you. It will be shipping to stores in March 2015. If you're a shop owner and will be in Houston, please come by the Moda booth #1744 to say hello and to see the collection in person. I'd love to share it with you!

The colors range from hibiscus pinks and coral to lagoon blues and aqua. New for me is a darker charcoal grey (almost but not quite black) that i really love! Here are a couple more photos:
The other wonderful thing is that this line will coordinate beautifully with Horizon to create a perfect tropical paradise. Can't wait to see what you dream up. Actually...now that i'm thinking about it...how about we have a fun giveaway! Just leave a caption for the photo of Franny below and she will pick a winner on October 14th. We'll help her send a layer cake of Horizon annnnd a charm pack of Paradiso off to the lucky winner!
 Have a beautiful weekend!
xo,
kate


October 3, 2014

Autumn Bounty Festival


Come join me at terrain in Westport, CT tomorrow to celebrate this harvest season! There will be lots of treats, workshops, crafts, music and more. You can make your own birdhouse/birdfeeder, vote on the best home-baked pie, learn how to make a pumpkin centerpiece or harvest wreath. Some workshops require pre-registration, so please check the terrain website first. The Westport Farmer's Market will also be there with an abundant market of fresh veggies...so bring your appetite too. Several artists (including me!) will also be there with an assortment of wares from ceramics and scarves to photographs and jewelry. I'll be offering framed and unframed original hand-carved woodblock prints.

Hope you'll come say hi!
Have a beautiful weekend.
xo,
kate

September 19, 2014

Celebrating Five Years With Moda Fabrics: A Horizon Giveaway! Sponsored by Fat Quarter Shop

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of my working with Moda Fabrics and the arrival of my 15th line for Moda – Horizon – we’re teaming up with our friends at Fat Quarter Shop for a giveaway!



I’m throwing in a downloadable quilt pattern – winner’s choice of one of these three ocean-themed patterns.


To enter today's giveaway:

Just head over to the Designer Tidbits entry on the Jolly Jabber and follow their guidelines to enter! The winner and his/her comment will be announced on the Jolly Jabber on Friday September 26th.

Wait, there's more to celebrate! Additionally,
is today launching a new and exciting customer-appreciation giveaway on their blog, the Jolly Jabber.
Overview: For those purchasing a yard or more of Horizon fabric or a Horizon jelly roll, layer cake, fat eighth bundle, or fat quarter bundle at FQS between now and October 15, 2014, your review matters! Specifically, your video review of your new Horizon fabrics or precuts matters.

Hop on over to the the Jolly Jabber blog today to learn how to enter to win a $100 FQS gift certificate for your video review of Horizon.


Good luck everyone!!
xo,
kate



September 13, 2014

Moda Love Blog Tour — Winners!


Hope you enjoyed following along for the Moda Love Blog Tour! I loved getting to know my fellow designers even more. It was really interesting to see the same quilt pattern made in a wide variety of fabrics. They all looked so different!

And thank you all so much for your terrific ideas on the binding for my quilt. After weighing several options, i decided to go with this:
Many of you suggested this one and i think you were right! It adds just a touch of color and lets the focal design of the quilt sparkle. Also, if you're like me and are too eager to get a quilt finished by hand-binding it, i found a wonderful tutorial for machine binding over on Allison's blog, Cluck Cluck Sew. I hadn't tried it this way, and it was really easy to follow. 

I'm happy to announce 5 randomly selected winners who will receive a pre-cut of Horizon. Congratulations!
FAT EIGHTH BUNDLE
My Verna quilt was accepted for the MQX show in Springfield Illinois this month. I still can't believe Verna was your first line, I just love it! I love all precuts but would love to win a fat 8th of Horizon to make a petal quilt...the sea glass colors are amazing. I suggest binding with either a blue or turquoise print? RxQuilter 

JELLY ROLL
I just love your cats. My boyfriend and I have 2 cats, 2 mini donkeys, 2 border collies and 4 ducks. That is quite a handful but you just gotta love them all. I totally love blue. Just such an amazing color. So, the color blue that you used for the center of the quilt would be the color to use to bind it. Would indeed enhance your quilt. I have followed your blog for a long time and admire you so much. Your fabric line Horizon is definitely on my list. Thank you for being a part of the Moda Love Blog Hop and the chance to win my favorite, the Horizon Jelly Roll. Sandi Timmons sandit1@sbcglobal.net


LAYER CAKE
LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE Your Quilt!! Love this fabric line too!! I would bind it in Aqua...just seems right shade to me! :) I love Layer Cakes, Charms & cool lil' Mini Charms too!


CHARM PACK
Beautiful colors in your quilt. I love the beach! This line of fabric perfectly reflects your love of the ocean. Of all the precuts you listed, I'd have to say a charm pack is my favorite, but only because I haven't tried a layer cake! Thanks for the chance!


MINI-CHARM 
I love the mini charms and this pattern is perfect! My guild has a raffle for 12x12 mini quilts and I'm going to make a few of these for the raffle! I love pre-cuts as they lend themselves to being able to whip up a quilt in no time. I like the idea of a white, off-white, or cream binding so that the awesome blues show up!


If you're one of the winners, please e-mail me at info(at)katespain(dot)com with your mailing address and we'll get your prize off to you!

And you know how it goes around here. As soon as one fabric collection is released, there is another on the horizon *wink*. Next up, Paradiso. This collection has a tropical vibe and will go beautifully with Horizon! More to come on this, soon.
Have a beautiful weekend!
xo,
kate

September 11, 2014

Horizon – Orchid Dress with Flapper Hat

For her final project with Horizon leading up to its release, Becca DuVal made a delightful dress and hat for Kaelyn. Beautiful! 
Photos © Becca DuVal
Pattern: "Hummingbird Dress" by Rabbit Rabbit Creations.

Great thanks to Becca DuVal for her extraordinary creativity, skill, and work!  And for Kaelyn!
Kate

September 2, 2014

Moda Love Blog Tour & Giveaway


Hi everyone and happy September!
I just can't believe how quickly this summer has whizzed by.
I LOVE summer — mostly because i LOVE these:
and days like these:
and seeing these beauties again:
and did i mention these:
and this:
and these?
It sure has been a beautiful one here in Connecticut and i hope you've enjoyed it where you are as well. 

I’m so happy to be kicking off the Moda LOVE Blog Tour with the LOVELY
and super talented 
and

Don't forget to pop on by and visit their blogs today too.

Today we'll be answering some questions and chatting a bit about some of the things we LOVE. One that comes to mind is how much i LOVE working with Moda. Above all else, the people who work there are my favorite part. They sure know how to have fun and to keep quilters engaged, inspired and challenged to keep making new things.

When did you start quilting? Tell us about your first quilt.
I started quilting around the time that my first fabric collection, Verna, was released 5 years ago. As a beginner quilter, i discovered precuts and fell in LOVE with them! I found this pattern on the Moda Bake Shop and it looked fairly straightforward so i decided to give it a whirl.
It's so much fun looking back at my first quilt — remembering what it was like to make, and realizing how much i've learned since then. I still LOVE this quilt and use it often (in seasons other than summer, that is!).

What is your favorite Moda precut?
 I'd have to say it's a tie between a jelly roll and layer cake.

What fuels you to create?
First, this:
And then maybe this:
But seriously, at the heart of pretty much everything i design is my
LOVE of drawing.

When i was a little girl, i carried a large hard-covered sketchbook with me everywhere. We kept our crayons and Cray-Pas (oil pastels) in a small woven basket — they were all loose and mixed up so my sister and i would have to dig around to find specific colors. I LOVED oil pastels— not because i knew what they were, but because i LOVED what they were able to do. The colors from these were much more intense and saturated than crayons and you could use your finger to smudge and blend them. I LOVED drawing with these because a sunset could never look as bright and beautiful no matter how hard you pressed with a crayon.
It's hard to express what fuels me to draw, though. I think part of it is in having a vivid imagination. Also, the process of looking carefully at something is a slow and careful activity that ignites my curiosity. It keeps my eye wandering around shapes and noticing relationships between light/shadow and positive/negative spaces that i might not have seen before. The activity of drawing captivates me with alluring turns and puzzles, and challenges how i see with each blank piece of paper. I LOVE a creative challenge,
and always have.

So i think my need to draw started way back, while digging into that crayon basket and finding the freedom to explore with my hands and imagination. As I’ve grown up, it has become a life commitment, a happy and humbling adventure and a vast, ever-blooming LOVE. 

I also LOVE to garden. And, it turns out, these two LOVES create so much inspiration....
... that it pours into my work with Moda. Designing fabrics has been such a joy i could not have foreseen. It’s also helped me to realize that LOVING what you do and connecting with others who share similar LOVES can make our lives more fulfilling.

I LOVED making the Moda Love Quilt for this blog hop. You can download the free pattern and make it using a layer cake, charm pack or mini charm pack. I used a layer cake of my newest fabric collection, Horizon.

And i LOVED how easy it was to piece the squares and over-sized half-square triangles. The quilt top went together in less than a day.
The color palette for Horizon was inspired by luminous shards of sea glass i've collected over the years, and once i had finished this quilt top, i had the brilliant idea to go to the shore close to our house to take pictures. There's a bench on the beach just for taking quilt photos!
BUT, it was really breezy...
...and the quilt top just wanted to fly away like a kite..
...no matter how high or low i held it.
Pete and i found some rocks to anchor the corners...and it ballooned out like a sail.
So i decided to finish the quilt, hoping the extra weight would keep it from blowing around. We went back a couple days later and sure enough, it worked!
I LOVE this next photo of the backing because you can see through to my quilt-holding-helper. It was about 90 degrees and 95% humidity and i LOVE him for bearing with me while i took these photos, even when the camera battery died and we had to start all over and retake them.   
Here's another photo, indoors, so you can see the gradient of colors a little better.
I guess you can tell, i LOVE the color blue!

There's just one thing ... i need your help. I always get to this point and have such a hard time figuring out what to do for the binding. It seems like such a small decision, but it frames a quilt in such a way that it can either detract from what's already going on, or enhance it. What would you do for this one?
Please leave me a comment below to let me know. Oh, and please also let me know what your favorite precut is: layer cake, jelly roll, charm pack, mini charm pack or fat eighth. You might just win one of Horizon! Some lucky names will be randomly selected and i'll post the winners on September 13th. Good luck and thank you for your help!

Don't forget to visit these LOVELY designers as the Moda Love Tour continues!

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 4, 2014


SEPTEMBER 5, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 8, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 9, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 10, 2014


SEPTEMBER 11, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 12, 2014


 SEPTEMBER 13, 2014
Winners Announced on ALL Designer Blogs listed above 

Thank you so much for stopping by!
LOVE,
kate
PS: A few more things i LOVE? These three!