July 2025

Archive | July, 2025

New York’s Finest

Fellow Quilters,

Yet another busy year is flying by. Here we are in July already and I haven’t yet had my annual trek to the local garden center for herbs and a splash of “annual” color for my flower beds. I’m hoping to get there next week – fingers crossed that they still have some basil in stock.

What has kept me from my gardening, you ask? Travelling! With Hubby to far-away places, to quilt shows, and to guilds and shops for trunk shows and teaching.

Puffin Island in Reykjavik Iceland

Hubby and I recently travelled to Iceland (which is green and lovely, and has lots of puffins 😊),

Very cold (it was -20C with the windchill on May 25th) Qaqortoq Greenland

Greenland (which is NOT green – not a tree in sight, and lots of icebergs) and Newfoundland (delightfully charming – Canada’s easternmost province, with the occasional iceberg).

Lots of icebergs sailing away from Greenland

While strolling along the main drag in St. John’s NL, I stumbled upon a most fabulous quilt shop – East Coast Quilt Co. – and of course had to have a photo with the giant patchwork whale.

East Coast Quilt Co’s patchwork whale

I presented a trunk show and Borders workshop to the Kemptville Quilt Guild in eastern Ontario, then the Common Threads Quilt Guild in Ottawa before teaching 2 days of classes at Watergirl Quilt Co. and greeting the Quilt Tours International bus tour on their Quilt Canada/Quebec City tour.

The happy students in my Garden Blooms workshop at Watergirl Quilt Co

Speaking of Quilt Canada, I was there too – were you?!? I helped hang the quilts, volunteered in the Youth Challenge area, took 2 inspiring wool applique/embellishment classes from Sharon Fisher, went to the dinner trunk show event (excellent!), did a 1-hour demonstration in Northcott’s booth to an enthusiastic crowd of quilters, then shopped till my wallet was empty.

My haul from the tempting merchant mall

Anna Maria Parry and I with my Garden Blooms quilt made with her fabrics

It was a busy show, with gorgeous quilts, many enticing booths and so many familiar faces! Thanks to everyone who stopped to say hi. Reconnecting with fellow quilters is one of my favorite things about quilt shows. It fills my creative soul!

I’ve also been hard at work finishing up a plethora of new patterns. PC322 Twinkle features The Christmas Mouse flannel collection and showcases the darling 7” squares and border stripe.

PC333 Making Tracks features the stunning Tundra Crossing collection. The bear paw borders challenged my design/pattern drafting skills (I love a good challenge) and you get the benefit of not having to do the math for this intriguing quilt. It would be equally suitable for any bear panel.

Anna Maria Textiles’ first batch of collections is starting to ship to stores, along with 3 of my patterns featuring these delicious fabrics. PC330 Garden Blooms is a fat ¼ friendly pattern with fun 3-dimensional centers in the flower blocks. I taught this pattern as a class at Watergirl Quilt Co last month, and the students nailed those centers!

I fell in love with the printed diamond fabric from the Shooting Star collection and showcased it in PC331 Diamond Daze. This vertical strip quilt is surprisingly quick to piece. Any large-scale fabric could be substituted for the diamond print.

Stretching my modern creative muscle, I created PC332 Synergy, a fat ¼ pattern that utilizes the colorway fat ¼ packs of Anna Maria’s first release under her new AMT brand. How fun to see these contemporary fabrics updating a classic Melon Patch design! Because curves can be intimidating for some quilters, I recorded a how-to video for this pattern and the link is included in the pattern.

I’ve also been busy with this month’s Quilt Block Mania design 😊. The theme this month is Style and Fashion. Hmmm… because the current pattern that I’m finishing up has some New York Beauty blocks, I took my inspo from this and designed my The Met Gala block. This block has it all – it has some paper-piecing, some curved piecing and a touch of applique. So, when you first look at the block it doesn’t look anything like a gala – I get that. But wait – put several blocks together in an on-point layout and the magic happens! Ballgowns appear! You can use the same color for all the ballgowns, or use a different color for each one, choosing a lighter and darker pair of shades for each one. The upper portion of the gown is created by corners from adjacent blocks, so you’ll want to use a design wall and add the bodice portions to the gowns after the rest of the block is completed. You can download the The Met Gala block pattern here.