I'm popping in here today to share some exciting news...I'm going to be on the American Patchwork & Quilting Podcast on Monday, March 18, 2019!!!  The show will be available for you to listen on Monday after 6 pm EST on Pat Sloan's Blog HERE.  You can just open up her blog on your computer, turn the sound on and have a listen.  Not complicated at all!  You can also listen and subscribe via ITunes.

If you have ever been curious to hear my Southern drawl, then please check it out next week.  Hopefully I won't be too nervous as the show is live and you will quickly see that I can be quite the talker when it comes to sewing and quilting!

Today is the day, I'm up in the Paintbrush Studios Mad for Solids March Madness 2018 bracket.  What does this mean?  Time to vote for me (or my competitor, that's ok too) but only one of us will move on to the next round.  There are 16 players, each choosing their own 8 fabrics and color story and in the end there will only be 1 winner.  It's all in good fun, so no worries.

You can vote on the Inspired by Fabric blog, Facebook page and Instagram.  One vote per platform per person, so you can have up to three votes.

Above is a photo of my bundle, and now it's time for me to share my title and inspiration:

Glory of the 80's
Inspired by my childhood in the 1980's, all the great things that I loved, flamingos, Sanrio, Little Twin Star, plastic charms, stickers, boom boxes, Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears.  Taking all those memories and updating the color palette into something a little more modern and totally 2018.

All of these vintage 1980's items are my personal treasures from my childhood.  I was born in 1980 so I experienced the whole decade!  I can honestly say I still love these items, especially my Sanrio and Little Twin Star items, it's all so cute and little.  Love that flamingo pen too though I will say most of his tail feathers have rotted off. LOL

What do you think?  Did I succeed in capturing my memories in fabric form?  I hope so, I love it.  These fabrics will have to become a 1980's inspired quilt.

I dug out all my treasures and had to decide what to include with my fabric pictures, but I thought it would be fun to share some of my other treasures.  The photo below is all stationary, pens and stickers.  Who remembers the Snorks?  Some of those stickers are plush, some fuzzy, some holographic, but all from the 80's.  That grape pen totally smells like grapes still today.

The photo below is just a small sample of the hoards of sticker sheets I still have.  This collection totally represents the 80's to me.  That Muppet Babies sheet smells like bananas, are we sensing a theme here?  My kids have recently become obsessed with Duck Tales, and would love those stickers, but hands off, you aren't playing with these.  Did I mention hoarder?  I think so.

I hope you enjoyed my collection and if you have a moment, take a wee bit of time and go vote!  Thank-you!  I also want to thank the wonderful people over at Paintbrush Studios for asking me to participate again this year and for making such great solids.  If you haven't worked with them, I really recommend it, great hand and a ton of colors.  What's not to love about that?

I have been invited for a second year to participate in the Paintbrush Studios Mad For Solids 2018 game or playoffs if you will.  This is honestly the only type of March Madness that I care about.  As a participant I chose eight fabrics from their impressive collection of 168 colors and created my own "color story" if you will.  There are a total of 16 participants that have been randomly drawn and placed into a bracket.  Starting on Sunday, 3/18/18 at 6 pm CST you will be able to vote on the Inspired by Fabric blog, Facebook and Instagram.  Each day there will be a new "face off" of sorts until it eventually narrows down to just one winner.  This is completely for fun and honestly most of us participants are friends, which is really great.  You have the chance to win fabric just by voting, so win win!  All the details and all the color palette's of the Sweet 16 can be seen HERE.

The color palette I have chosen can be seen above, and I'll tell you all about it next week when it is my day for voting (Saturday, March 24, 2018.)  If you want the inside scoop ahead of time you can visit the Inspired by Fabric blog and read all about it.

I do hope you decide to play along, I think it is fun and only takes a second to vote, so why not?

Paintbrush Studios invited me to participate in March Madness, Mad for Solids 2017 and obviously I said yes,  What is better than picking your own custom palette of 8 solid fabrics?  So what exactly is this event?  Well just like the March Madness basketball brackets, PB Studios has set up a friendly competition between 16 bloggers (fabric junkies) and we have been randomly placed into a bracket with daily voting by you guys.  All fun and no stress, sounds good to me!

You can see from the photos the eight fabrics that I chose from their  Painter's Palette Solids.  Aren't they pretty?  I have the names in the captions of each photo so you can tell exactly the name of each color.

We were asked to name our bundle and give a brief description of the inspiration behind it, which you can read below.

Floral Fiesta
A color palette inspired by the explosion of flowers in the Spring, the fiesta that comes after a long winter.  Happy, fun, vibrant, pretty, lively, bold, a celebration of color.  Just a touch of Mexican flair, the intensity of bright colors contrasted against stark white and dark midnight.

Ready to vote?  You can visit the Inspired by Fabric blog starting Monday, March 27 to cast your vote and voting is on Instagram as well.  Voting for my specific bracket will take place on Wednesday, March 29, 2017.  The first week will narrow down the group to the elite eight and week two will conclude with the final four and then onto the championship game.  That's not all, just by voting you stand a chance to win a bundle of fabrics as well!  Two randomly chosen voters will win quarter yard cuts of the winning bundle.  No reason not to go vote, it's easy and you can win fabric!  Thank you Paintbrush Studios for hosting such a fun event and inviting me to play along.

Popping in today to share an upcoming blog hop hosted by I'm Feelin' Crafty.  I was lucky enough to be a pattern tester for this great new quilt pattern and will be showing off my finished quilt on Friday.  Not to brag or anything, but it turned out so darn cute!  I know you will want to make one too once you see all the great participants in this blog hop!

Excited already?  Ready to purchase the pattern?  Then click HERE to go to the I'm Feelin' Crafty Craftsy shop to purchase the pattern and get stitching!

I know I've been super quiet lately, but I've been steady sewing and have quite a few finishes to show off in the upcoming weeks, so please stay tuned and I hope you all are thoroughly enjoying your summer!

Happy Monday!  I thought I would pop in quickly to share a few things going on in my world.

My husband took the kids to my Sister-in-law's house this weekend, thus freeing me up for a few hours.  My mom was also visiting and helped me to tackle basting my KING SIZED City Sampler quilt.  Yeah, I was majorly dreading this project, as it measures a whopping 104" x 104" but with the help of my mom, it really wasn't so bad.  Actually it went really smoothly and her help was very much appreciated!  I am estimating that over 500 safety pins went into this one, roughly every 6" or so.  Whew, so glad to have that task over with and very excited to start quilting this one!

I received some super exciting news on Saturday, that I was chosen as the Second Place winner in the Mosaic Tiles Quilt Along hosted by Craft Buds!  I couldn't be more thrilled and excited, I'm still so pumped up!  I wanted to thank Craft Buds, all of the awesome judges and lastly all of the amazing sponsors of the quilt along.  Hop over to Craft Buds and show all of the other participants some love, because there was some amazing entries in this contest, they all deserve praise.

Lastly, after doing some figuring and traveling confusion from my husband (don't ask.)  Austin, Texas is only a 6 hour drive from my house, making QuiltCon totally doable!  I actually plan to travel via Amtrak (kinda excited about that alone!)  So yes, I'll be there, QuiltCon 2015!  Hope to meet you there!

A few months ago I received the most lovely gift in the mail.  Do you recognize it?  Last year it was part of the Zakka Along 2.0 - Patchwork Please sew along.  It is the Sweet Trips Embroidery Pouch (week 18) and this one was made by my friend Debbie over at A Quilter's Table.  Isn't it the sweetest!

Debbie made it for me as a "just because" and boy did she nail it!  It is so perfect, adorable and oh so handy.  You see right at the time I received this lovely gift, I had just started the Autumn Sampler by The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, and was using a gallon size Ziplock bag.  So sad.  So I threw that sad Ziplock bag away and immediately stuffed my new pouch full of all my cross stitch goodies!

You can see my pouch filled to the brim below.  It had a space for everything and holds it all so well.  You can see back in the day when I took these photos just how far along I was with that cross stitch project (not very far!)

On the left side it holds my floss, the actual cross stitch piece (folded) and my chart of colors and symbols.

On the right side it holds my needles, and the current thread I am using, plus my scissors tucked away in a pocket that keeps my boys from getting their precious hands on them!  I have been using this embroidery pouch every single day, traveling in my purse, car and by hand for months now, it is the perfect size and perfect thoughtful gift for me!

Below is where I am currently on the sampler.  My background fabric wasn't quite dark enough, so the white kinda disappeared.  To solve this issue, I am adding in a gold thread with the white to make it pop, and hopefully stand out a bit.  If you look hard at block number 13 you can see the gold on her hat.  I have been steadily working on this one, enjoying every minute and enjoying my little gift even more.  Thank you Debbie!

While we are on the topic of Debbie, I was thrilled to find out yesterday that she won 2nd place in the Tula Pink City Sampler Quilt Along, hosted by Sew Sweetness.  Tula Pink herself picked the winners and I couldn't be more thrilled for Debbie, she completely deserved it and if you want to check out her awesome winning quilt, "Unlocked" then click HERE to see what a beauty this quilt really is!

Ironically, after publishing this post, I was browsing through my old blog posts and discovered that today, exactly four years ago is when I started blogging!  Wow, time flies and it is so hard to believe that it has already been four years   Thanks so much to all of you for joining me on my journey and for all the friendships that I have formed in these years through this little blog!

Popping in today for a brief post.  First I wanted to mention that my One Block Wonder Quilt was the "Viewer's Choice" winner over at Quilter in the Closet.  Once the quilt-along was over, Jen opened up voting on all of the entered quilts, and I am thrilled to say that mine was the most voted for.  Thanks so much to all of you that voted, it really means a lot to me, especially since there were so many fabulous entries.  Now I just have to decide how to use my gift certificate to The Intrepid Thread!  Woo Hoo!

I have been steadily working on my Autumn Sampler (pattern by The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.)  As you can see I jump around quite a bit and not one block is "finished" yet, but that is fine with me, I just pick a spot that I want to stitch and just start stitching!  I have been enjoying this so much, SO MUCH!  I stitched while we were on vacation, I stitch in the car rider line, I stitch in the evening.  I bet I already have 20+ hours on this baby, which is kinda insane if you think about it, but I really have just been stitching along and loving every minute of it!

Lastly, I had a little story to share.  My husband and I always joke around about what we want our tombstones to say (I know this is morbid) mostly or always joke things.  For example, I want mine to say: "I told you I was sick."  See funny, the idea of bringing laughter to others in a cemetery long after I'm gone cracks me up.  So back to the point.  On a long car ride, where I was steady stitching on the above, the following conversation takes place:
Husband:  "Your tombstone is going to say, "I came, I sewed, I made a lot of crap, I died."
My Response:  And underneath that it will say, "Life Well Lived!"

And I think that about sums it up folks, love others, do what you love, life well lived!  That is all I have to share today, so go out and have a great day!

Rachel over at Stitched in Color is hosting a mosaic contest called Clashy Bright.  The basic point is to head over to Marmalade Fabrics, pick a collection of 12 that you define as "clashy bright."  This is my collection, I think I wanted to enter because I kinda define myself as clashy bright, and if you asked my husband, I'm sure he would agree.  Instead of just picking a bunch of random fabrics that would "clash" I chose fabrics that I think clash within themselves, especially the two ends on the very first row.  Those two are like, "Wow, these are some CRAZY colors mashed together in one print!"  I then choreographed the rest of the collection to match those two and stuck with a very defined palette that in the end I think is the definition of Clashy Bright!  Do you agree?

By now I'm sure you have heard, but Google Reader will be a thing of the past soon.  Major bummer.  So, if I was fortunate enough to have you as a follower using Google Reader to read my blog posts, I would love for you to continue following me!  You can either follow me via RSS (see the side bar of my blog) or if you are hoping over to Bloglovin, I would love for you to follow me there!  Click below to do so!  Thank you!