Woo-hoo - it's here!

This week I had a real surprise waiting for me when I got home - an advance copy of my book! If that wasn't a pleasant enough surprise, the staff at Martingale sent me these lovely flowers too. In a week that has been busier than my liking this, has been a wonderful little oasis of happiness.

By chance if any of you want to delve into the world of quilt books Martingale is just wonderful to work with and this is just one example of their toughtfulness. The editorial staff has held my hand the entire way, always answering my silly questions and making sure I wasn't going to fall flat on my face during the writing process. Now with the "getting down to business" train is getting rolling, their marketing department is just as helpful. Really. And I would like to thank the academy....

A new month - a new newsletter!

February is almost over - where did it go!? What that means is that a new newsletter is almost ready and last month's newsletter will be history. There will be one more mailing this evening, so if you haven't signed up and would like this month's free project there is still time... ;)

For those of you having trouble confirming your subscription just send me your information and I can help you sign up.

I you have signed up and haven't gotten it, spam filters are most likely the culprit. Make sure to add info(at symboly)stitchstudios.com to your safe senders list and that should solve the problem. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Talk about being in over your head!

Otis, our Great Dane puppy - now a whopping 95lbs at the 5 month mark, has recently discovered he is tall enough to take things off the kitchen counter, tables and any other surface within his reach. This includes being able to stick his head inside the trash can whenever he feels like it!
So this weekend, he really gives it the ol' college try and winds up getting the trash can lid stuck on his head. I was quilting away in my studio and I hear him softly whining. Usually this is just him trying to entice Ginger to play with him when she's giving him the brush off, so I just let them be. But he just kept on whining so I do some investigating and find this him in this sorry state! I just about lost it I laughed so hard, and of course immediately got my camera before removing the lid from his head.

Tag you're it! Ok, well I'm it.

DOH! Direct hit! I have been tagged by the fabulous Happy Zombie herself, Monica! So it goes, I'm supposed to reveal seven weird things about myself - since I think most things about me might fall into that category I'll just pick a few I'm actually willing to admit... *ahem*

1. I have a love for miniature things.
Who knows why - but miniature version of things just make me shout out and smile. Mini-oreos, mini-cans of diet pepsi, you name it. While I have been able to restrain myself as of late I will gladly walk through the aisles at Target, spot a mini- something or other and have to check myself, at which time the item may or not be thrown into my cart in a fit of impulse buying

2. I have the ability to watch movies I love over and over and over again.
I suppose this may not be such an oddity as a personal trait that my husband just shakes his head at. Miss Congeniality is in my DVD player at the moment - I swear I've seen it twenty times at least. Heck, it's pretty hard to turn on the TV and not find it playing somewhere on some channel on a Saturday afternoon. I'm a victim, I swear!

3. I'm a quilter and I have a stash - enter my studio at your own risk
Hello... my name is Cyndi and I'm a quilter... I have an addiction to fabric. Believe it or not, people who aren't quilters thing this is a pretty weird thing. "So let me get this straight, you just buy fabric, put it away and just play with it occasionally? Oh-keyyy..."

4. I talk to my dog Ginger
At least they don't talk back, right? What better audience! Okay, so they aren't in deep conversations, it more like "What do you think of this one Ginger?!" My pup just sits there next to me at the sewing machine and listens to every crazy word I say wagging her tail, just as happy as can be... That doesn't make my crazy, just weird. Right? *Please let the answer be right... *

5. I am a shopper who doesn't buy anything
So, picture this, I will shop, let's say Macy's, try things on, like a few things, then proceed to talk myself out of them and put them back. Unless... (see weirdness #6)

6. I am a bargain shopper
Unless it's on the clearance rack for like 75% off the marked down price and suddenly whatever I have in my hand becomes the deal of the century and will mostly likely end up as a story being regaled to one of my family at some point in the day. I love finding bargains, they make my day. It's genetic you know - I come from a long line of bargain hunters!

7. I don't like chocolate -there - I said it!
Yes, you heard that right! Not a big chocolate fan, but I will surely devour a banana cream pie if you leave it unattended in my presence.

Wow - I feel like I've been in a confessional! How uplifting to air your weirdness and fly your freak flag for the world to see, eh? Who's next... hmmm.... who should I gift with the flag of freakness? How about The Late Bloomer, Pam Kitty Morning, From Little Acorns, Bunny Tails, Mrs Schmenkman Quilts, Jackie Clark Designs, and Bloom Creek.

Strut your stuff - It's show and tell time!

I have just been completely overwhelmed at what a wonderful response I've had to my new newsletter venture. There are now officially over 100 people signed up and I am just totally flabergasted. Quilters and bloggers alike from all over the world have joined in the fun!

With each newsletter there is a free project of somesort, and this month is a little Valentines themed block called "Apple of my Eye". Here is my quickie interpretation of it - minus the embroidery for this one. I have a feeling this little block might end up in a future pattern - nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

{Apple of my Eye}

I would just love to see what everyone is doing with this so I set up a Flickr group to see if I can persuade you all into a little show and tell time. This announcement is prefaced with a warning: "I don't know what the "h-e-double hockey sticks" I'm doing with Flickr! So if I set it up wrong I'm sure that y'all will let me know right? My assumtion is that I just give you guys the url and you can tag your pictures to it... but what the heck do I know?

Blue? Me never...

First off, I'm just not a "blue" person. I do shades of blue - aqua, tourquoise and other sorts of fancy blues like periwinkle ocassionally, but straight up blue? I'd have to say, I just don't gravitate towards blue. Now, don't get me wrong, I have a whole drawer in my fabric stash devoted to blue. Blue I think about using frequently, but the color just never seems to make it into my projects... Until now!

These beauties arrived on my doorstep this week from Holly at Lakehouse Dry Goods for a very special project I'm working on this weekend to meet a magazine deadline. The finished project is a fun and easy patchwork pattern and I promise to post more on it when it comes out. I say that I like I wouldn't post about it anyway? PUH-lease... ;)

Could this be progress?

This weekend, I have miraculously found some time to tie up loose ends on some almost done projects. These blocks are from a new patterned I will be releasing at Spring Market in Portland this May called "Feathered Friends". I ran out of fabric for the star blocks, found the fabric, bought it and then stashed it away instead of just sitting down at the sewing machine and finished the darned things.


Besides, those appliqued bird blocks weren't even close to being finished! This is the only finished bird block, but the others are just a few leaves and a wing away form being done. I've set a goal to get these blocks done this week so I can try to put the top together by the end of the month. I set lots of goals for myself in the hopes that it will spur me on and possibly in some magical way make me organized...HAH!

There's lots more sewing going on, but I'll save those for another post and another day. Back to sewing!

Haven't received your newsletter?

On a sidenote - If you signed up for the newsletter and haven't received one yet, make sure you have gotten a confirmation email from the mail service and clicked on the link to confirm that you actually WANT the newsletter.

Somehow people have caught onto something called "SPAM" and have put security measures in place. Go figure!

Okay - that's the last post on the newsletter. I promise I'll get back to quilting, and I mean like soon. I have two deadlines this month and time is quickly slipping away... tick-tock, tick tock. Do clocks even tick-tock anymore? Or do they just hum?

Newsletter Pattern Update

For all of you that have been nice enough to sign up for my newsletter, and especially signed up for the free block pattern, it seems there was a slight problem with it... NO TEMPLATES! HAH! See, I'm laughing... really... well I hope you all weren't TOO put out and I'm here to rectify the situation.

If you signed up for the newsletter and still have it, you can redownload the PDF file and stitch away to your hearts content. If you deleted the newsletter (*GASP!*) then you can email me and I'll send it off you to you via email.

Thanks for your patience and by the way - thanks for visiting!

Once Around The Block

Because I am pretty fickle - okay, downright picky - I start every new quilt by making a finished block before diving into the rest of them. I'm pretty sure this isn't any groundbreaking design rule but it sure does help me. So here's the first block in my "Honey Bee" pattern which I am shooing for releasing in early March along with a couple of other new patterns. A couple of posts ago I previewed the fabric finalists for this one, and most of them actually made it through. I still have another version of this block to do in constracting color way- we'll see how that goes!


Lots of my patterns are designed this way - make one really scrappy block and then repeat the same pieces for each block. This process adds a level of sanity to the mayhem that is my love of scraps.

There have definately been a couple of quilts in my past where when I was finished putting the blocks together a giant whoop of a "What the hell was I thinking?" has come out of my mouth and then took some evassive maneuvers with borders and such to rectify the problem.

Happiness is... eye candy

Happiness is a pretty long list for me - lots of things make me happy! My husband, my family, my dogs and quilting of course. Well, I'm just going to add one more thing is that very long list - a big hunkin' jumbotron of a computer monitor!!!! Oh my lord... I just went out and got an HP 24" monitor that is so amazingly huge and beautiful that I just had to leap to the computer and get to bloggin'.

Out the window goes my quilty post on my progress with the aforementioned "Honey Bee" pattern. This purchase definately jumped to the head of the line. It's like staring into a giant pit of gooey eye candy.

It has automatic "ambient light adjustment", which sounds awful romantic for a monitor but in my strangely lit studio it's a dream. This thing has built in speakers, pivots to portrait mode (which frankly, will I use? Who knows, but it's darn cool), and even raises and lowers to the perfect hight. For me that changes as the day goes on as I seem to shrink the longer I sit on my behind in front on the computer.

Oh, and did you know I'm a geek? A quilt geek, a computer geek and a geek of many webby graphic designy things. Yesterday, whilst reading the comic strip Rhymes with Orange, I laughed my butt off at a joke about Helvetica. Really... it was super funny, cross my heart and witches honor!