Winners of the Sham Book

Wow!  Mom and I just want to thank everyone who stopped by the last post and offered up all the nice comments and encouragement.  After all that work, your words really hit the spot.  We just hope that you will all have as much fun making the shams as we did!

The winners of the book from the last post are:

Alyson of www.alysonspetals.blogspot.com

Maria of www.sewlovetosew.blogspot.com

Cindy, who commented on Feb. 11, at 6:05 pm

WendyP of www.anotherdayinpensecola.blogspot.com

Just send your shipping address to hmulder@wecnet.com and we will ship out the books!

For those of you who didn’t win, the book is available to ship now.    You should start finding at the local shops in the next couple weeks, or you can find it online at www.fatquartershop.com.  If there are any other on-line shops that want me to list their link, just let me know!  Several of you had other questions for me about the book –

Are the pillows stuffed?  No, we used pillow forms in standard sizes.

What came first, the quilts or the pillows?  The quilts have all been published in my previous books, so we made the shams to go with quilts we already had.

Are the quilt patterns included in the book? No, they are published separately.  This book only contains the patterns for the pillow shams.

Do you have a supplier in the UK or Australia?  We never know exactly where our books and patterns end up.  Many shops order from our distributors, instead of directly from us, so we end up not knowing who all carries them.  I would just google the book and see if any listings come up in your area or see if any of the online shops ship internationally.

What are your paint colors in the bedrooms?  I always mix my own paints to get the right shades, so that is a little hard to share.  I don’t usually keep track of the formulas, but thanks for asking!

Many of you also commented how lucky I am to be able to work with my Mom.  I agree with you!  My mom can make anything out of fabric.  She made all our clothes growing up, sewed all our drapes, recovered our furniture, etc.  She even did the hard stuff like making Dad’s suits, our winter coats, and snowmobile suits.  One year Mom even made a covering for a black inner tube, complete with handles, and we pulled it behind our little boat!  She has always had this can-do-attitude when it comes to sewing and so capable that she can carry off any plan she comes up with.  I am so grateful to have grown up surrounded by this attitude.  She learned it from my Great-Grandma Anka and I am trying to carry on the tradition!  Mom says she remembers going to stay with Great Grandma for the weekend to sew.  They would pick out a feed sack, draft a pattern, sew the outfit, and Mom would wear it to school on Monday.  You can’t beat that!  It’s so fulfilling to be able to make something out of nothing . . . well not nothing, but just pieces of fabric.

On another note, I have enjoyed having the book, pattern and fabric deadlines behind me.  I even did some goofing off!  I started with some cooking. . .

I got Pioneer Woman’s Cookbook for Christmas, and I’ve been wanting to try out some of the recipes.

I decided to start with the mocha brownies.  They contained this much butter in an 8 x 8 pan!  Have you ever heard of that much butter in such a small pan?

The frosting was as thick as the brownie!  They looked good on the serving dish – the only problem was they were so rich that I couldn’t eat more than a bite or two.  It didn’t stop me sampling them!

I enjoyed this with my brownies –

I really enjoyed Greg Mortenson’s first book, Three Cups of Tea, so I wanted to read his second book too.  I thought it was so interesting and inspiring to learn about the culture and all the good things that The Central Asia Institute is doing for girls and their education in this region.

I also started a new quilt.  It’s using the fabric line Verna by Kate Spain.  It’s so gorgeous!  I’ll show you more when I finish the quilt top!

I’m also dying to start working with this line – Simply Sweet by Barbara Jones.  My design director Karen (from Henry Glass Fabrics) sent me these to play with!  Thanks Karen!

I’m going to work in a few pieces from Barbara’s previous line – Bubble Gum Basics.

My next fabrics to cut into will be these – Meadowsweet by Portobello Pixie.

So, as you can see, I will be taking it easy.  There will be only fun projects, with no deadlines in the studio this week!  Yeah!!!  It’s a great change of pace from book editing.

Once again, a HUGE thanks from Mom and I for your support of our last book!