A week of firsts...

Don't know what came over me but all of a sudden I got the urge to try my hand at two things I had never done before. Check out my very first quilt! I call it LOLLIPOP and I'm just so excited about the way it turned out... exactly how I dreamt it up in my head!



Here's a closer look. I pieced these "lollipop" shapes out of something sorta like a pinwheel shape that I drew up late one night in Illustrator. These crazy ideas often pop into my head in those wee hours of the night, just as I'm about to doze off... then I have to sketch it up real quick before I forget it all. I thought it would take a while to get it to work, but to my utter delight, the first lollipop I sewed up worked like a dream, so then it was just a matter of reducing and enlarging the pattern to get the other two sizes.



I pieced a quick background out of four 1/2 yard pieces of assorted Clover Dots that were cut at a diagonal, then appliqued the lollipops on top and Voilá! The quilt uses 11 different prints from my Mezzanine collection so it's a pretty good showcase of the line.

I also made my very first piece of women's apparel. I wish I could say this was as easy-peasy as the quilt, but I'd be lying. Those of you who follow me on Twitter already know I almost threw my seam ripper along with this tunic out the window last Sunday. I actually had to set this project aside for a couple of days and then come back to it because I was about to lose my mind!

On top of that, I think I had gotten so used to only sewing children's clothing that I had my sewing area all set up for working with tiny pieces of fabric. Once I started working with much larger pieces (especially for the quilt) I was knocking stuff off my sewing table left & right! I had to reconfigure the whole space to accommodate my new larger projects.



Well, I must've just been having "one of those days" because when I came back to it, head cleared and ready to "make it work"... I made it work:



Phew! It would've been a shame if this sweet little tunic ended up in the gutter just because of a bad sewing day. I truly adore the way it turned out and am still having a hard time deciding if I should actually wear it to Market or just hang it up on my booth...



And speaking of booths... that's another first! Jon and I are currently building our first trade show booth ever. We did have a booth at the Fall Quilt Market last October, but we didn't actually build anything (except for a couple of cheap IKEA furnishings). This time, though, we are building a full display with hard walls, custom-made shelving, columns and a bunch of other super neat surprises that I simply cannot wait to show you! Here's a little sneak peek as it sits in our garage nearly assembled:



The quilt I showed above is also sitting on one of the booth walls. Stay tuned as I will reveal more & more of the booth as we get it all finished up...