We Love French Knots

Hi all. Now that International Quilt Market is over, I'm attempting to get back on track with blogging again. One of the things that I missed telling you about was that in September Penguin & Fish was interviewed on the We Love French Knots blog run by the lovely Bari J! I designed a free pattern download of a little squirrel for the blog as well. The squirrels are going CRAZY outside right now prepping for the winter so I thought it was an appropriate time to share this little pattern again. Here is a link to We Love French Knots, please check it out! And here is a link to download the free squirrel embroidery pattern.

Fall Quilt Market 2011

Hi all! I'm back from Fall 2011 International Quilt Market. Quilt Market is a trade show for quilt shops and the rest of the industry to come on down and see what's new. There is one held in Spring and one in Fall. This was my fourth one, I can't believe it! I'm exhausted and could sleep for a week! It was an excellent show and I got to meet a ton of great peeps. Wasn't able to leave the booth very often, so I don't have many pics from the show, but I thought I'd share a couple from my booth. We hung Safari Sweet all over the walls. I think my favorite thing is all the little Safari Sweet plushies we made. I love the little alligator that's chilling with the big hedgehog. Silly. That's me in the booth in the first pic. That's only the first day and I looked tired already. On the wall with all the embroidery kits, you may spy some new little fellas. We now have the Giraffe, Jellyfish, Zebra and Alligator as kits! They're not up in the shop yet, but they will be soon. And all the patterns and kits now have iron-on transfers included, Yay!

Let's MEET and play with Safari SWEET!

Hi all. I have exciting news. My first fabric collection, Safari Sweet, IS NOW IN STORES! Yay! To celebrate, the lovely Nikol from Sewtropolis in Minneapolis, and I are having an embroidery get together on Saturday. We'll be stitching up little embroidered animal brooches like the one above. It's a super fun project and is especially good for kids or if you've never embroidered or sewn before. At Sewtropolis you'll also get to see a whole bunch of fun projects that you can make with Safari Sweet, like the giraffe quilt. I'll also be signing my children's book, No Monster Here. So come by on Saturday, it'll be SUPER FUN!

Saturday, October 1
1:00 - 3:00pm
Sewtropolis
5 West Diamond Lake Road
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55419

Society6

Hi all. Have you checked out Society6 yet? It's a super fun community website where you can post artwork. Then people can purchase art prints, laptop skins, iphone cases and more all with the art on it. There is so much fun art posted there, I'm tempted to fill my studio wall with different art prints. I signed up for a Society6 account a long time ago but just uploaded my first piece today. It's my Owl in Ferns embroidery that I made a while back. I ordered myself an iphone case with it on. Can't wait for it to arrive! If you want one too, here's a link to my Society6 page.

My studio in STUDIOS mag!

My studio is in the Fall issue of STUDIOS Magazine, yay! Should be on newsstands soon!

Jean quilt progress

Thought I'd share how I spent my Saturday. I worked on my jean quilt! I started it a couple of months ago and spent the entire day on it today. It's a "log cabin" style quilt with gold woven wool squares surrounded by one inch strips made out of old jeans. The dark colors are the outside of the jeans and the the light colors are from the insides. To make it bigger you just keep adding strips around the outsides of all the squares. I'm hoping to make this into a queen sized quilt and I'm about half way there right now. Unfortunately I ran out of old jeans. Boo. I'll have to try and steal a few more pairs from the hubs, but until then this project is on hold.

Pile'o'gators

Finished making some alligators out of Safari Sweet!

Instagram love

So I decided to get on the Instagram bandwagon. Instagram is a fun app where you can make your photos transform into vintagey yummies. You can also share them with the Instagram and other social network communities. These are my first six pics. That dang squirrel keeps trying to get to the birdfeeder. He's made a few leaps but hasn't quite made it yet.

Stuffed

My Kitties and Unicorns were in Stuffed magazine. Yay! I'm so happy to be among so many great plush artists. Stuffed is available at bookstores and check out more pages here.

I made a Kitty and Yarn

Sheesh, it's been another long time since a post. I promise you it's because I've been working on some super fun (and time consuming) projects that I'll be able to talk about soon. Just thought I'd share with you some recent fun stuff. I completed a custom kitty of the lovely Chloe. I don't do these very often, but when I do they end up being really fun for me. I love being able to add all the extra details that I don't do with my normal kitties.
And the other little project is...I made yarn! It was my birthday last week (31 eek!) and the hubs and I stopped by the Minnesota Textile Center to check out the gallery. The Textile Center is also the home of the Weaver's Guild of Minnesota and they had their store open when we were there. They had a gorgeous wall full of beautiful yarn on cones just waiting to be woven into fabric. They also had books and some kits. I purchased a Spindle Kit that came with some poofs of wool and a spindle made from an old cd. I've seen people with their spindles online making all sorts of yarn and I've been wanting to give it a try too, so I was just squealing when I saw the kit. When I got home I gave the spindle a try and found that it definitely got some getting used to. You almost need a third hand to man the spinning while your other hands work on putting the wool together. I have a new appreciation for all the spinners out there. It wasn't until I was done that I realized that I had been spinning the yarn way to tightly so when I made it into a ball I had to unwind the yarn a ton. Gah. All in all spinning was fun. Not sure I'll be doing much more of it (it was kind of hard on the wrists) but I got to learn a new thing and I probably won't obsess about it much longer. Now I'll just obsess about the wall of yarn back at the Weaver's Guild.

Amrita Rao hot

Amrita Rao

Raima Sen

Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez

Emmanuelle Chriqui in bikini

Kristen Stewart Cute

Kristen Stewart

Katrina Kaif Cute

Katrina Kaif on GQ magazine cover page

Katrina Kaif hot