I have been away from quilting and sewing for a bit.  Thawing weather has brought me back.  The first quilt block I have ever made back in 2007 was a log cabin and I always wanted to make a log cabin quilt.  So for my new project, I decided to look into a mini log cabin quilt.  I gathered several light background prints and several dark background prints.  They are mostly from American jane lines with a few prints from various other lines.

I am preparing to make approximately 30 3" blocks so that the finished quilt is a decent size.

Awhile back, I signed up for a talk given by Tula Pink at my LQS - City Quilter's.  I'm so glad I did because her talk last night was so enjoyable.  She gave an 1.5 hour presentation of her previous lines with Moda and Free Spirit (as well as her upcoming line - Salt Water) and her ideas for her designs.  She talked about the steps she goes through to come up with her ideas.  She begins with a pencil sketch on grid vellum paper.  She draws just a portion of the whole idea because it is then flipped and mirrored on fabric to create her beautiful damask designs such as the owl from Full Moon Forest and Hushabye and the frog in Prince Charming.  She also uses Illustrator to input her ideas into the computer.  She also talked about how about 6 years ago, there weren't any interesting "modern" fabrics except for kaffe Fasset and Amy Butler and with her interest in screen printing, she decided to design her own fabric.  within just hours of uploading her designs on her blog, Moda contacted her to do a line of fabric and that's how she got started!

Tula was charming and it was fun to see her ideas on paper as well as to see some of her beautiful quilts completed (she doesn't quilt herself but she does piece everything herself).

Introduction

Hi! I am new to blog land. I am an avid knitter and sewer. I guess I am also an avid collector of things that are related to knitting and sewing. I have been collecting knitting machines for a few years and added several sewing machines too.

I love fabric and yarn! I am also interested in hard to find fabrics - mostly fabrics that are not in print anymore. I guess that's how I came to name my blog Blue Bouquet. Last year, I became obsessed with Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy fabric line. When I got interested, there were very few of the prints left - mostly pinks. All the most popular prints such as the blue, green and grey seeds were no where to be found. Well, I've found all the prints - but the Blue Bouquet was especially hard. Recently I got hands on the very hard to find blue bouquet print! I found all the prints through lots of searches and then finally swapping some fabrics with some very nice ladies who are also obsessed with finding hard to find fabrics. Now if I can just find some of those ever elusive brown posies to add to my small scrap I have in my collection...