Years ago, when Pixelville came home, Liam claimed the quilt as his and Maeve started plotting and scheming for a girl version. A place to drive the cars, but amongst flowers and castles, not airports and boy things. Perhaps we shall call it Pixie Center.

She drew the city. Complete with parking lots, overpasses, beaches, umbrellas, curvy roads and a banner welcoming you to Maeve.

She sat down with the beloved Kona color card and picked her colors. Pomegranate, lagoon, citrus, white and of course azalea.

While it took me a while to get it into a pattern release, the end results rocks and she approves. I wonder if she’s expecting a commission on sales? Hmmm…

The roads take you past a castle, a lake with a sailboat, a park with a fountain, houses, shops and of course, parking lots. Perfect for a little girl who dreams about driving around Pixie Center.

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And now to the other end of the spectrum. We go from pink castles to roaring dinosaurs in Typosaurus.

If you talk to Liam, you are sure to be fully educated on the topic of dinosaurs. He’s gone from being scared of the scary monsters to being obsessed and memorizing the entire Dinopedia and dressing as a Triceratops for Halloween.

The background is somewhat Groove-like … meant to give the illusion of the layers of the Earth with buried dinosaurs just waiting to be discovered. While the dinosaurs themselves are appliqued letters, with the letters forming their bodies.

Who doesn’t love the awesome spiky Stegosaurus.

Both Pixie Center and Typosaurus are eligible for the Permasale discount.

Next up … Christmas!

I completely forget what the inspiration was for ebb & flow was. Perhaps one of those days just sitting and doodling on the computer morphing one thing into another and that into another and then adding a little from four versions ago. And then finish it off with a LOT of purple. Lots. The more the better.

Angela Walters did the quilting on this one (and all the others in today’s post).

This is an easy-technique-wise quilt to assemble and includes instructions for crib, throw, twin, queen and king sizes. I think it would also look really neat with scraps (but then again, I think everything looks neat with scraps!).

Next up…

The inspiration for Dahlia is simple. Remember this from Color, Block & Quilt?

When I was working on the illustrations last spring I thought to myself, what would it look like if the flower just kept going and going?

Well, Dahlia is what it looks like. The pattern includes instructions for all five sizes.

Next up…

Numbers were the next logical step after letters.

I wanted to make the pattern have a scrappy look, but with a bit more order. For spot & dot, I used a mix of charm packs (5″ squares) and scraps from Scrap Mountain. And here I should put in a huge THANK YOU to Mr. Carolina Patchworks for tracing and cutting lots an lots and lots of fusible interfacing for this release.

I know a lot of people get overwhelmed with the shear number of scrap pieces needed for some of my quilts so I was going for a similar look with lots of texture but overall slightly less intimidating. A perfect lap quilt!

Raw edge fusible applique makes this project come together quickly!

And the last for today…

Gosh, I love this. Sunset makes me smile. The inspiration was pretty simple:

This one has instructions for all five sizes. One for each room!

Be inspired by what’s around you. We have a beautiful world.

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These four are also available as a discounted bundle.

(Spot & Dot is printed in a book format so unfortunately international shipping is crazy, but I can fit 2-3 bundles in one shipment if you have some IRL quilty friends and want to combine an order.)

Modern Rose Garden made its debut as a pattern on August 21, 2008.

It’s had some minor cover and inside changes over the years since it’s been a bestseller since day one and has needed a LOT of reprints.

But as the stack was once again dwindling, I felt it needed more than just a reprint. There were some tweaks to the design I had been wanted to do for a while but never found the time. I finally made myself do the tweaks, along with a new quilt and new insides. So, now, close to 5 years later, we have the all new Modern Rose Garden.

It was fun sewing this one. I haven’t made this pattern in 3 or 4 years so it was a nice walk down memory lane. One of the tweaks is that it is now fat-quarter friendly which is the most-asked for change *ever*.

**–**–**

Sweet Garden has had a similar history. It debuted January 25, 2010 as a layer cake (10″ squares) version of Modern Rose Garden.

Bazillions of layer cakes later, Sweet Garden is still chugging along and it’s stack of patterns in the stock room was dwindling like there was no tomorrow. While nothing changed in the design of this pattern, it got a new quilt, new insides … new everything.

This quilt makes me smile. There’s a lot of emotion and wish and hope attached to it. Though no one really will ever understand the back story to a lot of what I do, it’s there. Believe me.

Angela Walters did the quilting on both of these projects. Fabrics are Robert Kaufman‘s Kona along with Sue Spargo and Wendy Morris Folkloric Blooms in Modern Rose Garden.

It’s taking its time, but it’s turning into a beautiful Spring around here. The flowers, sun and hopes of Summer have been helping me get through what’s been a very long few months for a few reasons I won’t get into, but suffice to say I’ve been channeling that into a new batch of patterns that I hope can help capture springtime for some of you — as well as some wintertime to help cool things down a bit!

Perhaps soon I’ll have more time to converse with everybody a little more — apologies if I’ve been a bit, well, brief lately. In the meantime, I’m excited to hear what you think of the Spring 2013 patterns, and hope to see some of you at Market in Portland next week. If you’re going, please stop by Booth 2432 and pet the quilts!

A few shipping notes:

• New titles will begin shipping Friday, May 10th.
• Due to Market, there will be no shipping Tuesday, May 14th-Monday, May 20th.

I’ll go into more details about each of the titles starting tomorrow, but for now, I’m happy to present Carolina Patchworks’ Spring 2013.
Click on each cover to jump over to the shop and see more.

There are also a couple of discounted bundles. First the four (normal/non-themed/modern/geometric/whateveryouwanttocallthem) patterns:

And the four Christmas patterns:

Tomorrow we’ll start off the fun with those top two patterns. Yes, you’ve seen them before. But they are back (ok, so they never went away) and better than ever!

Island Quilter is on the lovely Vashon Island — just a short ferry ride from Fauntleroy in West Seattle. Come out and see all the pretties!