Hoop Up 2 swap

Hi all. I thought I'd share a project that I worked on during my hiatus from blog land over the holidays.

While scanning my Twitter last summer I found out that John (Quilt Dad) was going to have a "Hoop Up 2" embroidery swap. I thought the swap would be a fun way to make some new embroideries and meet some new peeps so I signed up. The way the swap worked was everyone would be placed into a group of about 5 people. Each person in the group comes up with their own theme for an embroidery. After everyone shares their theme, each person has to stitch an embroidery for every other swap partner in their group based on that partner's theme.

The theme that I chose was "Pretty Pets in Pretty Borders". I made a sample of my theme to share with the others in my group. You can see my process of the sample piece for my theme here and here. Above are pics of the embroideries I did based on my partner's themes. The "Owl in Laurel" is for John's (Quilt Dad) "whimsical woodland" theme. Lim's Cafe is for Amy's (badskirt) "retro or silly sign" theme. The Etch-a-Sketch is for Jill's (spinster sister) "Text + ?" theme, where Jill wanted us to have text plus something else in our embroideries. And the final piece is for Cara's (quiltnookgal) "Bluebirds with Tea" theme. I had such a good time stitching everyone's piece and it was a fun challenge to work within someone else's theme. Once I receive all my "Pretty Pets in Pretty Borders" from my group partners, I'll be sure to take some pics and share them. I'm so excited to see how they all turned out!

Another exciting thing about the swap was that it allowed me to develop my iron-on transfer Puppy embroidery patterns. I love when work and play collide!

Safari Sweet is released!!!

The lovely Brandi over at Clothworks Textiles let me know yesterday that my first fabric collection, Safari Sweet, is out. Yippee! So tell your favorite quilt shop that you want some. :-) One of the neat things about it is that it's all organic. And not just organic, but GOTS certified organic. GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) is a third party organization that makes sure every part of the process – including harvesting the raw materials, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labeling, trading and distribution – maintains the organic status of the fabric. Here's a link for more info on GOTS certification. Another super fun thing is that there are new organic solids that coordinate perfectly with Safari Sweet, and there are also a couple of flannels in the collection. Check out Clothworks Textiles blog and website for more. Over here at Penguin & Fish, we have all of the animals in Safari Sweet available as embroidery patterns and a few of them as embroidery kits. I can't wait to stitch up some animals and make little pillows with the sample yardage when I receive it. All you friends who are having babies know what you'll be getting as gifts. heh heh. I'd love if you could help me get the word out about Safari Sweet. I'll definitely share some more pics once I receive samples. Fun!

Artist: Fishing Flies by Claudio D'Angelo

I was helping the hubs out with a project this morning where I needed to find some fishing imagery (weird right, but kind of a nice change of pace). I came upon these gorgeous flies by Claudio D'Angelo. Aren't they amazing! Definitely little works of art. I love how graphic and tribal they look. It'd be fun to print one out on a huge canvas and hang it up somewhere around the house. Check out his flickr page for more pics.

Jon's short film: Photos and Drawings

Photos & Drawings Trailer from Studio Collective on Vimeo.

Last year was the "year of film" for my husband. He was one of the producers for the feature length film, "Ghost from the Machine", and also finished his first short film, "Photos and Drawings". Above is the trailer for the short. It was so much work but really fun. I can't wait to be able to help on more of them! Go Jon!

Doing a little blog redesign

Hi Peeps. Check out my new blog design! The other one was looking a bit dated so I thought I'd freshen it up a bit. One of the things I'm excited about is the wider images. I'm hoping that the redesign will get me motivated to start posting again. It was a struggle to keep up with everything at the beginning of the year, but as I cross things off the "to do" list I'm feeling ready to get into the routine of things again. Yay! So take a look around and let me know what you think. Are there other things you'd like to see on the blog? Let me know, it's a work in progress.