Here are a few vintage images that I found this week that were making me happy… You might think that I’d gotten lost. Lost somewhere in the pre Market drama, the sewing, the writing, the editing, the printing, the binding, the stuffing, the formatting, the packing… Thank goodness that other people do most of those afore mentioned tasks or I really would be lost under a pile of fabric or paper…take your pick. A special thank you goes out to all of you who work so hard around here, well above and beyond the call of duty at this “crunch” time of year, you know who you are. There is no way that we could do it without you!! Well, I’m trying to resurface for a bit, even if just for an afternoon before the piles swallow me whole again…

Okay, so today I feel like I’m doing housekeeping of various types… Real housekeeping to be sure. There is an ever growing pile of clean laundry that just never seems to get folded and put away. Any volunteers for help with that??? Like you don’t have your own piles! Fig Tree housekeeping [way more interesting than the real kind…]: We got dozens of concerned emails yesterday because at various points in the day our site and connections were down. I apologize for any emails that may have been bounced back to you but we were in the midst of some internet HOUSEKEEPING and just had a few little glitches along the way…. Our new book Fig Tree Quilts:Houses is here and on bookshelves everywhere! If you are local and would like to see my happy, shiny face LOL I will be doing…

So its Saturday today, otherwise known as soccer central around our house. I can only imagine what it will be like when Ella gets older and decides that she too needs to play the family sport…. Heaven help me then! All I can say is that I hope Eric can figure out how to be in three different places at once… PROJECT UPDATE On a more work related front, I finished up the bird quilt, which I’ve almost for sure decided I’m going to call Birdsong. Then I took a few shots of 2 other new patterns so that I could give you some peeks, but as I said before, I’m not so good with the whole peeks things, so I’m showing you the whole things instead. You’ve already seen a portion of the ninepatch quilt [which as…

Its That Time Its that crazy time of year we’re preparing for…. I won’t even say it… but the bad word starts with M and ends with T and its another name for shop… if that doesn’t help you, then don’t worry, its probably better for you if you don’t anything about the busy frenzy that most fabric and pattern designers are in these days. For us here in the Fig Tree Studio, work is clipping along at a steady pace. I met with a group of my favorite creative gals last night and one of them asked me if I was in a panic yet… I said, “Panic, yeah, I’ve done that already, I’ve moved through now, I’m on to calmly checking things off my to do list…

Okay we all know that this is market prep time and that when it comes to technical computer stuff… well, the less said the better. More importantly, I’m sure you have figured out by now that for me, everything has to “fit” in with the feel of Fig Tree to work for me. So when, Holly told me I had to put this cute little button up…. I had a little problem, becuase the original color scheme just didn’t go with my site LOL!. You can see the original button here, or here. I felt the need to make a few slight alterations to my button…. I hope I didnn’t offend anyone. Oh and for putting it on my side bar, well, that will have to wait until I have a few more minutes to rub together…. On…

Busy as a bee…. like a chicken with our head cut off… ants in our pants… like a deer in the headlights… whatever critter type idiom you choose to use, it might just fit around here these days! Although our production schedule has been well on task for the entire summer, somehow when late summer arrived we found ourselves scratching our communal heads to figure out how we all still had so much to do. Funny how whenever there is extra time, we manage to fill it with extra projects. This summer we have worked on projects for Australian Patchwork & Quilting- you saw some pictures of that here, Quiltmania [the French quilt publication], some fabulous projects in the works for American Patchwork & Quilting, a few calendar quilts, a couple new lines of fabric for our MODA mothership, and few other projects that we can…

My latest project is off to its recipient. Its a project going to Australian Patchwork & Quilting & I’m calling it Vintage Summer Throw. The funny thing is that when I was working on the design of the quilt, I was planning on a winter quilt given the time of year that it will be published. And then the publisher reminded me… it would be summer in Australia then! Of course, how could I have forgotten that their seasons are the opposite of ours. So for the first time in years I got to work on a summer project in the summer, what a concept. I’ve gotten so used to working in advance, designing for seasons that are long gone or not yet here, that is was quite fun to work in the current season. Here are a few unquilted shots of the throw. The…

Okay, I promised some more shots of the Fresh Vintage Birds quilts [I don’t know it that will be its final name or not… I’m thinking of something with the word Aviary in it… today I’m thinking that at least] so here are a few more block shots that I took once I located my errant camera battery. I’m at that stage of the quilt where I could just put the pieces together and be done with it, but instead I’m “FIDDLING” with it. Do you know what I mean? It’s a very technical term, I know, and all of us quilters know exactly what it means… and yet I can’t really describe it other than… I’m just FIDDLING with it!! My deadline to get it to the…