Shamrock Season

YAY! It's Shamrock Season.  I don't know why but I love these plants so much and watch for their arrival at the market starting the end of February. It's a short season and they come and go fast. I treated myself to two this year.  Sometimes I can get them to live a full year, the plants from last year petered out a couple of weeks ago.  I put the 'remains' out in the garden just in case the pips are dormant. Unlikely though.

 

Any big weekend plans? Just the usual here. Hope you have a good one. xop

Things to do.

You know how much I love to make myself kits.  Actually I liked it a lot when Elizabeth used to make them for me, because I'm lazy like that... but in a pinch I can do it myself.  Anyway I cut myself a kit for Holly's Kitty Cat Picnic quilt that is in the April /May McCalls Quick Quilts. You can grab a peek at it here.             

Fat Quarter Shop is carrying kits for the Kitty Cat Picnic quilt, and you can find it here! I borrowed Holly's copy till I can grab my own, I'm not sure it's out in shops yet, I went to two places and couldn't find it. It can't be long now.

 

Hope your week is full of happy things. xop

Things that are cute.

So what did you do with your Tuesday?  I had a great day staying at home and catching up on things that needed doing.  Trip to the market, take care of some paperwork,  work on some future-fun-projects, that kind of thing. 

Then when I was done I rewarded myself with a read through something cute!  Have you seen Lori's new book Great Granny Squared? It's adorable.

 

Back to the studio today!  Lots going on, can't wait to share it. 

 

 

p.s. The cutest fellow was watching us eat lunch on Monday, click HERE to link over to instagram to see him.. he's the cutest.

Rainy Day

Good morning... another gloomy rainy day here but that's fine with me. I love the rain. The hills surrounding Livermore have greened up considerably with this rain, and its so nice to see.  Sad that it's taken till MARCH to become green! Jeepers, can you believe it's March already?

 

My little crab apple is confused, only one branch is leafed out and blooming, the rest just have the beginning of buds.. maybe it didn't want to risk it with our unpredictable winter, self preservation. 

 

No point in even bothering to try and get a good picture here at the dungeon. But I like how my Liberty Road quilt turned out, I need to get the backing together and drop it off at Diana's to be quilted. I liked working from my photoshop layout, I didn't need to worry about mixing up my blocks and rows, I could just glance at the digital layout.  It was a good sewing day Saturday, NCIS: LA all day long!  I was trying to think of what to start next but what I really need to do is finish up that basket quilt.  Honestly. I'm the worst.

 

Busy week ahead at the studio.  What's on your agenda? Did you have a good weekend? xop

Confetti

Happy Friday my special peeps!  Hope your week has been a good one.  I've had a mix of home days and work days this week, all of them good.  Plus we've had some great rain here, and even a thunderstorm! Exciting. 

 

I've had some fun playing around with an idea.  Took a few minutes to cut out some fusible applique letters and shapes.  I'm hoping that it turns out as cute in real life as it seems in my head.   After running some errands I scooped up my little  mother, it was her birthday yesterday, and brought her over for some dinner and cake!  I ended up making  angel food cake, selfishly my favorite.  She couldn't decide what she wanted.  Back in the day I always had angel food cake on my birthday... only not the plain kind, the 'confetti' kind, which was angel food cake with sprinkles cooked in it so it was polka dotted. Came packaged in a mix, with the separate little sprinkles, like you couldn't just do it on your own.

 

WHAT THE WHAT???? THEY STILL MAKE IT!!! I was hoping that I'd at least find some old 60's graphics and found this!!!   Wow. I'll be on the lookout now.  Holy cow. 

Ok, back to the studio today. IT'S ALMOST MARCH.  Yowsers.  Have a good weekend everyone! xo

 

Wednesday

Good morning!  Thanks for all the nice comments on the Charm Pack Cherry Quilt!  I had a lot of fun doing it and I'm always excited to participate in a project like that!  I loved how they all look so different. Wouldn't it be a fun thing to kit up out of scraps? I like to cut myself kits to work on.  Or kits for a gift. 

 

I have been working away with Holly.. it's so inspiring to work with her, she has so many ideas bubbling up out of her. Being in a creative environment has really jump-started that creative urge in me. I've  finished up cutting all the sashing on my Liberty Road Quilt so as soon as I have time to sit down and sew, I can finish that up.  The blocks are so cute!

 

Isn't my new mug a crackup?   My friend Carrie sent it to me along with a back up Keep Calm and Carry On mug.  She totally gets me.  Do you follow her on Instagram?  She shows works in progress at an alarming rate.

 

Ok, off to work. Although to be honest it seems wrong to call something so fun work.  Have a great day everyone! xo

Charm Pack Cherry Quilt

Good morning my fine friends! Today is Charm Pack Cherry Day here at PamKittyMorning!  CHERRIES!!! Doesn't that sound pretty PamKittyish?  

 

So what's it all about?  It's about the new free pattern over at the Fat Quarter Shop, and it's called The Charm Pack Cherry Quilt, you can download the free pattern here.

 

All it takes is two cute charm packs and two coodinating solid charm packs!  When asked what packs I'd like to work with I said I like sewing with friends so the FQS crew sent me Happy-Go-Lucky by Bonnie and Camille and a couple of red charm packs and well, I feel pretty happy-go-lucky to be sewing with two friends!

 

I think sewing together with Bonnie and Camille is pretty fun!   The Charm Pack Cherry Quilt goes together fast, making it the perfect go-to pattern for a gift, or  JUST FOR YOURSELF. (mine was quilted by another friend Diana)

 

One of the fun parts of this project is (driving it around town.. no just kidding, although it is fun) is taking your left over cherry patches and using them for the backing.  I made two checkerboard segments, added some Pam Kitty Picnic  green  strips, to make two panels and then added some Happy-Go-Lucky green floral to the mix.  Top it off with some Pam Kitty Love green and pink binding and I think it worked out rather nice!

 

Hop on over to the Jolly Jabber to read all about the Charm Pack Cherry quilts that were made just for this event!!!

 

Even more fun, check out this great video!!! Do you know there's plenty of great content over at the Fat Quarter Shop Channel????  

To celebrate this new pattern and video tutorial, Charm Packs are on sale till March 2nd! 

Just click HERE and find some charm packs and get started!

Thanks for including me Fat Quarter Shop.  Now go have a great day peoples! xo



Blue Skies

Yesterday I spent the day in Pacific Grove and it was lovely.  I have been wanting to go to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary.  It's off season for them, but there were still plenty there to see. 

 

You can just look up and see them fluttering by, not easy to capture on camera for sure.  On the less sunny side of the sanctuary, you can see them hanging in the trees warming up.  If you look closely in these pictures you can see clumps of butterflies, their wings closed, looking like dry leaves  It's really an amazing site. 

I hesitate to say it was cold, since I think it was 60 degrees, but the wind over the water was pretty brisk.  Lots of birds were sunning themselves on the rocks and in the parking area.  I was afraid to move my car, it had kind of a Hitchcock feeling to it, you know, when they drive out of town? Yikes!

 

No trip is complete without a drive by the Butterfly House.

 

It was a good day.  Luckily it's less than 2 hours to Pacific Grove so you can have a mini vacation at the drop of a hat. But it's back to work today, which is good, because time is flying by!  Have a good weekend people!!!

Wednesday

Good morning! As it turned out yesterday, I ended up staying home.  Holly had a friend coming over to help her unpack and you know me, I'm a huge distraction, a bad influence! So come Thursday morning I'll head back over there to get back to work. 

Back at the ranch here, I managed to get a few things done, including my cute block for the Sew Sweet Block Exchange.  Clara asked for a log cabin in blue and low volume whites.  Coincidentally,  at our sewing day Saturday, Alex was talking about a Skype chat with Cheryl Arkinson that you can listen to here. (part 1)  She shared a bit about her (part 2) discussion on low volume fabrics that I'm anxious to listen to. I'm very interested to hear more, as the terminology evolves with new people and new perspectives. I'm really curious about how a low volume relates to other terminologies.  Whatever you call them, I like them!

What's on your agenda today people?

Tuesday!

Hi there, how was your three day weekend?  I had the best time, Saturday was my sew day with the Debbies, this time joined by Deanna, Danelle and Alex.    Debbie let me in the door at 10am and I was totally The Thing That Wouldn't Leave.. leaving at 7pm.  GO HOME PAM.

Debbie was working on a quilt for one of the grandkids, Deb was working on her baskets from the class we all took in OCTOBER.  She totally shamed me. Her basket handles are hand appliqued even.  I didn't even prep my own handles for pete's sake.  Alex and Laura did them for me.   No excuses I guess.   Alex was taking the papers out of her  great quilt you can see here on Facebook. Danelle worked on some hand binding and Deanna marked her quarter inch marks on some pretty St. Patrick's Day Lemoyne stars.   I finished all my flag blocks except one that was missing a piece.  Evidence to be supplied at a later date.

 

 

As usual there's just never enough food to go around.

 

Deanna brought us homemade heart shaped fudge that was delicious.  I hid mine in my sewing room and ate it while watching tv and working. It was awesome. Danelle brought us each an adorable Valentine.  They're a thoughtful mother-daughter duo!

 

Monday I headed to the studio, and I'm back there today, it's that time of year!  Exciting for me, but a bit boring on the blog. You can catch little updates over on my instagram. I'll be there quite a bit this week, so the pickings will be slim around here.  Hope you all have a great week! xop

 

 

Valentine's Day

Good morning Valentines! 

 

 

Hope you'll be mine!!

 

 

xop

Blogger's Bundle

Good morning!  I have some super-fun news to share this morning!  Donna from Donna's Lavender Nest has asked me to put together a Blogger's Bundle.  And here's my bundle all laid out with her pretty vintage Singer machine!

One of the things that I love about working with Holly is that she works on making sure that not only do all the pieces in our collections work together, but they also work with other pieces in your stash, and for shop owners, in your store. We have focus pieces, but we also have  companion pieces, and they are perfect companions for your shop/stash even if the focus prints are gone.  So, for my bundle I've added some pieces that aren't Pam Kitty Picnic just to illustrate that! 

If you would like to win this cute bundle of fabric goodness, hop on over to Donna's website and  sign up for her newsletter, then leave her a comment on her blog so she knows you've signed up!  Already on her list? Leave her a comment telling her!  It's just that easy! I hope you take some time to shop around Donna's too, she has a nice collection of wonderful fabrics, notions and trims just waiting for you! Don't forget to check out her selection of vintage fabrics as well!!!

Donna will be  drawing  a name next week on Thursday 2/20  so head over and sign up!

Ok, that's it for me today! xo

Wednesday

Good morning.. how is the week going for you? I've just been perking along here doing the usual. Which isn't much to be honest! I have my swap stuff together so I can start cutting on my block.  It has been fun to go through my stash looking for treasure.

Sorry for the slap-dash photography, I just used my point and shoot in the sewing dungeon.  I waited way to late in a already gloomy day to get a photo. I've been working on an idea, but it's just not coming together as I'd hoped.  Back to the drawing board.

 

Are you up to something interesting at your place?  Tell me all about it!

Hello Tutorial

Hi there, how are you?  Nice rainy weekend here, so I managed to get something done around the house.  Even some sewing related things, which is probably surprising!  Anyway.. today I wanted to talk about making the Hello Pillow.. I don't have a fancy pattern, but I have a download of the "hello" for you, and I think that's probably the part everyone is interested in!

To get started my pillow form was a travel pillow from Target that is 14" x 20".  It's a lot softer and squishier than my normal pillows and I think that it's because it's for sleeping, and not for being adorable in your pillow vault. (WHAT??!! You use your pillows and don't store them in a Pillow Repository? SHOCKING!)  There's several sizes of rectangular pillow forms out there, and you can adjust the 'hello' for your size pillow.   You don't have to use a rectangular pillow either!  You can check out pillows on my Hello Pillow Pinterest Board to see all kinds of options.

 

So back to getting started, you cut your pillow front fabric the EXACT same size as your pillow form. This will give you a nice firm pillow.   Next up, print this Hello PDF...the hello has already been reversed for tracing onto fusible web.  Trace on to fusible web and fuse to your word fabric. Carefully cut it out and fuse it to the pillow fabric.  I eye balled the placement then used a ruler to make sure it was straight on my fabric.  It's about 3" from the bottom and 2 1/2" from the right hand side.  I like the right justification here. 

 

Fuse it and blanket stitch the edges.  I love blanket stitching and could do it all day. But if you don' t have blanket stitching capabilities on your machine or you like straight stitching better, go for it. 

 

Next up, machine quilt the background.  I outlined the letters then stitched a 1" grid.  I love the texture. Plus, I think the three layers, top, batting and backing, make for  a sturdier pillow. 

Once that's done it's smooth sailing.  For my 14" x 20" inch pillow front, I used two 14" x 24" pieces for the envelope back.  I folded each piece in half so that it was 14" x 12" inches and basted them to the back with the folded edge in the center, overlapping to cover the pillow form.  Then I used two pieces of 2 1/4" x width of fabric strips to make binding and bound the edge.  Hand stitch and you have a pillow my friends. 

Now wouldn't a Love pillow be cute this week?

 

 

 

 

P. S.  Elizabeth wrote a whole book about words on quilts and you can find it here!