Sew Red

Sew Red is here!!  I'm so excited to be a part of this wonderful project, created and compiled by the amazing Laura Zander of Jimmy Beans Wool. 

From Amazon:  This beautiful follow-up to Knit Red features stunning designs from more than 25 top sewing and quilting celebrities, along with three 28 x 40 black-and-white pattern sheets. But this is more than a book of breathtaking projects: it's part of Stitch Red, a campaign started by Jimmy Beans Wool founder Laura Zander to educate women about heart disease and help them take charge of their heart health. Each showcased designer—including Amy Butler, Denyse Schmidt, Anna Maria Horner, Ty Pennington, and Kaffe Fassett—shares his or her experience with heart disease and offers tips for staying healthy.

We were all asked to come up with a project using red fabrics.  I used two prints from my Grand Hotel collection.  And since this book was focusing on heart health, I designed these placemats with built-in napkin holders-- I figured these would look great with your healthy meals!

Photo by Marcus Tullis.

Gosh, don't you just LOVE that photo!! 

I'm so happy to be a part of something this special.  You can pick up a copy of this book on Amazon.  And you can read more about the project at Stitch Red. 

Small, Original Artwork!

I LOVE to paint, but I have to admit, it can be hard to find the time.  My design business (and all that it encompasses) keeps me very busy these days.  That's a wonderful thing, but I really love to step out from behind the computer as often as possible.  In the past, I have primarily created large paintings, which are extremely time-consuming.  This past week I decided to see what might happen if I tried to create a painting in one day.  The results:

Nine 8" x 8" paintings in less than two weeks!!  Such a fun and challenging project!

I'm so accustomed to working on a big canvas-- this took a while to get used to.  I'm happy I did it, though, and happy to share these with you! These are all for sale now in the shop!  

Love Patchwork & Quilting

Oh, hello there, friends!  Welcome to my new website!  If you've been here in the past, you'll notice a brand new look!  After my time at Alt Summit back in January, I came home ready to make some changes.  First step, making the switch to Squarespace 6 from their previous version.  This new version is really fabulous and includes the option for ecommerce integrated right into your site!  It is all hosted by Squarespace, so that means one price for everything and one site to manage!  How awesome is that?! Here is a link, in case you are interested:  Squarespace 6 Free Trial.  Fine print:  this is an affiliate link-- so if you sign up and decide to stay with them after clicking this link, then I get paid for the referral.  I plan to talk more about them in a future post as this is a product I TRULY believe in!

I haven't seen it yet either, as it arrives in the US mid-March, but doesn't it look fantastic??  They kindly sent me these photos along with the great news that they featured my fabric collection, In My Room!

Yay!   A big, huge thanks to everyone at the magazine!

And thanks to you guys for stopping by!  I'm working on this site as I go, so you might find a few pages that are incomplete right now.  Please hang in there.  I'm also adding new products to the store on a weekly basis.  If you purchase anything in the shop, please let me know how you like the system.  This is a new system (for Squarespace and for me) and I want to make sure things work perfectly for you!

Have a great week!

Smart Creative Women

I'm so excited to share this interview with y'all!  My good friend, Monica Lee, has the best website in the world, Smart Creative Women.  She interviews women from all kinds of creative fields, and today I am her guest!

We talk about a lot of fun things... art licensing, Alt Summit, my coloring book, and following Seth Godin's advice to "Pick yourself"!  I had a blast talking to her! 

I was actually talking a lot with Monica last year when she came up with the idea for this show.  She is such a natural at this, I knew it would be a great format for her.  And it is even better than I could have imagined!  Be sure to check out her archives because she has interviewed a bunch of creative women!

Monica and I will be headed to Alt Summit next week-- so exciting!  And, even more exciting, I'll be speaking this year!  I'm leading a round table on Art Licensing and Portfolio Prep.  I'll be talking about getting your collections together for licensing.  I'm always interested to see what other artists are doing, so I'll be sharing examples of the different kinds of portfolios I send out to different manufacturers.  Speaking of which, did y'all know that Blurb now prints brochures and magazines??  I ordered these brochures to use in my discussion, and they turned out beautiful!

It is really wonderful that one can have one single brochure printed!  And the quality is amazing!  In the "old days" you'd have to have at least 100 printed, and it might cost a fortune.  Being able to print one brochure at a time allows me to tailor my presentation to specific manufacturers.  I can do as many different layouts as I like, and include whatever artwork I like!  And each manufacturer gets a lovely presentation!  Can you tell I'm really excited about these?!

Ok, off to do more prep for my round table!  I'll try to check in with you guys again before I leave on Tuesday, but if not, I'll give you the full recap when I get back!

Unveiled

The Unveil South Main show was awesome!  We had a great turnout, and I really enjoyed being able to share my newest paintings in a beautiful gallery!

Although, from a distance, these look a little washed out by the light, they looked great up close!  The bright lights really highlighted the detail:

At the end of the night I realized I'd forgotten to take any photos of the crowd at the show.  My friends kindly reenacted reactions of the enthusiastic crowd.

This is my favorite:

Thanks so much, everyone, for coming out!  The paintings are now hanging at Rizzo's Diner and will be there for a few more days.

Don't forget, you have until tomorrow evening to bid on one of my paintings.  Right now the bids are only up to $80, so you have a great shot at getting one of my original paintings for much less than I normally sell them for!  Click for details!