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a closer look at: No. 061 — Circular Reasoning

March 27, 2012 in Patterns, Quilts - Completed by emily | 14 comments

Seattle. This city is all about water — whether it’s falling from the sky, in the Sound, Bay or a lake, or frozen on the mountain you’re skiing on.

I’ve been craving anything and everything serene — and when I need calm, I head to the water. Hearing the waves recede through the rocks is perhaps the most soothing sound imaginable.

The blues of the sky, mountains and water that surrounds us is what inspired this quilt. This quilt is a subtle gradient of the blues of home + my obsessive love with letters.

Angela Walters had the job of quilting this one. My guidance was just something within the letter circle vs. the background. I love her swirls — and I know that sounds dorky, but seriously, they rock. I stare at them and try to figure out where she starts and ends and have yet to figure it out.

The fabrics in this project are Robert Kaufman’s Kona Cotton Solids. I pulled out my Kona Chips and started looking on the blues and aquamarines and then realized there was a ‘Poseidon‘ fat quarter bundle. A quick head-smack later and my colors were picked.

The pattern includes full-sized templates and applique instructions for how I chose to applique it. Feel free, however, to stitch as you please.

Click here for the shop listing.

But wait! There’s more!

First, I must clarify, this version of the quilt is not part of the pattern. If you want to make it, just substitute the colors of the rainbows instead of those listed in the pattern and you’ll be set.

After the success of hanging a quilt on the wall in the family room, I wanted to try another and have a change of scenery in the dining room. But with scraps — Scrap Republic style.

I didn’t have room for the background portion to be as large as it is in the pattern, so I changed it to fit the space. Honestly, it just was easier than changing the size of the dining room.

The background is entirely pieced of scraps — and not all of them are large. Most are quite tiny.

I took on the task of quilting this one. I really do like the quilting part of making quilts, I’m just usually lacking time and (lately) mojo to keep doing it. I challenged myself to do it, and to do it right. I have bitty bubbles in the circle, surrounded by concentric rings with random spacing between them.

The applique portion is also different than how I described it in the pattern because I wanted to experiment with using Aurifil’s 12wt thread (currently being used for the Designer Block of the Month) in the machine. I put 50wt in the bobbin and started sewing. And it worked. Fabulously. I’m totally hooked on it. The only hitch is to make sure your needle can accommodate the thicker thread.

Liam was my helper for these photos. He was by my side for every shot — except for those when he was taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. The kids love this quilt and are always trying to spell words with all the letters. Liam’s only complaint? Some of the letters are sideways and upside down. He gets very distressed over this.

You can see the two rainbows in this shot — plus my little helper. Liam is already planning the next quilt to hang on the house. More about that in Friday’s post.

I apparently have a thing for rainbows in a basic circular shape. I wonder what this means?

Tomorrow… No. 062 — Ascend.

Spring 2012 Pattern Release

March 26, 2012 in Patterns, Quilts - Completed, Stitchery by emily | 11 comments

Introducing the Spring 2012 patterns!

The short version:

Patterns are available for pre-order now and are expected to ship April 2nd. PDF versions will be available for purchasing and downloading starting April 2nd.

There’s also a pre-order special this time around.

From now until March 31st, you can order a bundle of all four new patterns for 20% off.

(Please note: It is really hard to estimate the shipping cost without having the patterns in hand to weigh — especially since two of them include templates. The listed shipping price is estimate and if I’m off by a large margin, I’ll refund the cost through Paypal when I ship orders.

This release features lots of yum: Robert Kaufman’s Kona Cotton Solids, Angela Waters’ impeccable and amazing quilting, Aurifil’s dreamy 12wt embroidery thread and the picturesque and serene city of Seattle.

Check back each day this week for lots of pictures and commentary on each. We’ll start tomorrow with No. 061 — Circular Reasoning.

The Posh Life of A Cover Model (aka a Sample Sale)

March 25, 2012 in Etsy, Quilts - Completed by emily | 1 comment

These quilts once lived the posh life of a cover quilt — made with precision and pampered through photographs and Quilt Markets. It’s now time for this quilt to find a good and loving home so my studio will have room for new creations to sprout.

All six are for sale on Etsy right now.

More Sides to the Story

March 22, 2012 in Uncategorized by emily | 94 comments

Now that Kate Spain has shared her identity as “The Designer” in my previous posts, I wanted to connect a few dots for folks who are confused about apparent discrepancies between what I posted and what Kate’s saying now. I still can’t share details of my correspondence due to confidentiality requirements in a settlement drafted by Ms. Spain’s attorneys (which I want to honor, even if she may, ironically, be violating it herself), but I feel safe saying that the route from A to B is a little more complicated than one might assume if one only knows the “A” and “B”. The below is merely a clarification of what I’ve already posted.

- As Kate said, she *did not* file a lawsuit — this is true. Instead, as I’d said, her lawyers formally and repeatedly threatened a lawsuit if several specific conditions were not immediately met, including payment of large sums of money and other conditions.

- Kate implied that the primary target of her lawyers’ threats was C&T Publishing. This is half true: both C&T and myself were explicitly and individually named.

- And regardless of the tote bag issue, Ms. Spain did indeed go after the book. Kate said that the subject was not my book, but the totes used in marketing my book (which I referred to as “the trigger” in my previous post, in order to help maintain Kate’s anonymity while the tote was removed from sale). This tote featured a photograph from the book (which included a fabric printed with her licensed designs, as well as my name and the name of the book in large letters). Although she may have personally considered this the core issue, her attorneys targetted both the tote *and the book* in their demands. Moreover, C&T had contacted Kate to deal with the tote once they’d heard she was unhappy with it and before the lawyers were ever involved. As I said in my original post, even after they had removed the tote from sale and agreed to several other demands with regard to the tote, Kate’s lawyers continued to press the issue of the book and refused to withdraw the threat of a lawsuit — until C&T got their own lawyers involved.

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Edited to add:

Many people have asked why I chose to bring the topic into the public eye. I posted it on my blog, which is just that — my blog. It’s about my small business and my life, and that’s what was going on. I did not point fingers and went out of my way to be as vague as possible regarding the trigger, which book it was in and even the gender of the designer.

The main reason for bringing it into the public eye, though, was the potential ramifications to the quilting community and every published book, pattern and magazine. If the demands I had received were to be applied consistently across the community, they would have changed what had been considered Fair Use within the industry to something full of licensing agreements and a lot of money.

Some are claiming this issue has nothing to do with the book. To the contrary, I never would have made it public had it not been for the claims against the book. If you’d like to have a more definitive view rather than “he said she said”, though — ask Ms. Spain to post the correspondence her lawyer sent me. Kate, you have my permission to do so.

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Monday, March 26, 2012 — edited again to add:

Todd Hensley, CEO of C&T Publishing makes a statement.