Aaaaahhhhh.  It’s so good to be back.  It has been so long since I’ve been able to be here and chat with all of you.  Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and saying “Ha!  You thought you had a plan?  Here’s where you’re going now . . . “  I know that each of you can completely relate.  So let me catch you up:

• Yesterday David turned 45.  We celebrated with a yummy Old Fashioned Devil’s Food cake and Fluffy Chocolate frosting from The Cake Doctor by Anne Byrne (Jamie Lee Curtis’ favorite cookbook).  David said it was the best birthday cake he’s ever had!  Then we enjoyed a couple’s dinner out at Dahlonega’s Crimson Moon and listened to Tom and Julie sing the night away.

• My younger son turned 10.  I cannot tell you how excited he is to be in the double digits.  He’s also wearing glasses now, and has become a voracious reader.  He’s so committed to reading he carries a flashlight in the car so he can read in the dark on the way to school.

• My older son is carrying the 60-lb bass drum in marching band, and is needing chiropractic visits because of it.  As much as we love seeing him march and enjoy attending the high school football games, I will be glad when he’s done carrying that albatross.  He’s now in the habit of drumming on anything that doesn’t move.  A habit only a mother can love.

• I taught a Color Mastery workshop to 70 of the  most wonderful ladies in the Crazy Quilter’s guild in Chattanooga.  Much of the credit for huge attendance goes to Sandi, one of my faithful and true quilt testers, who visited area guilds and put out the word that I was coming.  The guild made the workshop super affordable and even included a box lunch.  I dreamed the night before the workshop that we never got to the first exercise of three in the class because of the large group – a bit of a nightmare, really.  In reality?  I was truly amazed at how well everyone understood and applied the concepts of color in such a large class, and Sandi heard rave reviews all day.  Color is not an easy subject to teach, and it’s a challenge to do it with such a large group, but it was a perfect day for both teacher and students.

• Took a long overdue “me” day and sewed to my heart’s content, making the reversible Market Bag from Tanya Whelan, two Wonder Wallets from LazyGirl Joan Hawley, and a purse organizer insert in anticipation of Joan’s new Suzi pattern.  I used fabric from Michael Miller and Westminster from Karen William’s new quilt shop in Jasper, Quilt Shop on Main.  I used one of the Wonder Wallets as a business card holder and even got a compliment on it from a guy at a social media conference I attended last weekend.  Wow.

• I started a new business developing and implementing social media campaigns for small to mid-size businesses.  I’ve been so successful with social media in promoting Color Mastery that I’m helping fellow entrepreneurs do the same with their terrific products and services.  I am quite selective about my clients, and  partner only with people whom I believe in and I know put their clients first.

What does all this mean for my quilting, writing, and teaching?  It’s always my first love, but I’ll have somewhat less time to devote to it.  I won’t be posting on this blog quite as much, but you will find me on Facebook and Twitter every day, so catch me there at my personal page, Color Mastery page, or Willow Ridge Media page.

I will continue to write and teach, but will be approaching it all in a way unseen in our industry before.  I was a leader in publishing with many of the ways I reached out to my readers, being the first in the quilting world to do a blog tour, give away a chapter of a book, and have a YouTube channel.  I’m so excited about the new roads I’ll be forging in our industry, and all I can say is, “fasten your seat belts ’cause it’s gonna be a fun roller coaster of a ride!”

I’m getting my girl time on Friday mornings in my studio, when five young ladies arrive to cut, stitch, and play their way to adorable, funky projects.  Here Olivia and Abby show off their handbags made from a shower curtain, caribiners, and bungee cording.  Who would have thought all those unlikely players could be so cute together?  So far we’ve made pillowcases, a green shopping bag (complete with pink monogram, of course), and the handbag above.  Projects to come include a beach backpack, American Girl doll clothes, and a zippered case.  I’m not sure who’s having more fun:  the girls or me.

Are you sharing your love of sewing and quilting with the young people in your life?   I shared my Top Ten Tips for teaching the next generation of Project Runway designers how to sew in the Teaching Your Kids/Grandkids Wise Money Choices chapter of The Frugal Fabriholic, and here are the top three:

1. Small isn’t necessarily better.  Large projects use large pieces, easier for small fingers to manipulate
2. Let them pick the fabric.  Period.  Get over it if it doesn’t match.
3. Realize that not every sewing session needs to result in a finished product.  It took me a long time to understand that when my son said, “Mom I want to sew,” he didn’t want to make a project, he just wanted to sit on my lap at the sewing machine and use it.

The Spring Tulips table runner uses a lot of half-square triangles (HSTs) in the pieced tulips blocks.  In fact, every table runner I’ve designed so far uses them.  For much of my early years as a quilter, cutting and piecing accurate HSTs was a mystery to me.  I followed all of the instructions, tried the triangle paper, triangles on a roll, and just didn’t find a way that suited me.  I even did Debbie Caffrey’s method of cutting bias strips, seaming them, and then cutting the HSTs.  It was accurate, but a headache too.

I needed something simpler.  I like simplicity:  clean, accurate, easy, no weird tools, just the basics on how to do it right.  I finally figured out the secrets of accurate HSTs, and now I’m sharing them with you in this checklist.  I’ve become a huge fan of checklists after reading Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto.  It’s a fascinating look at how pilots, surgeons, architects, and other creative and technical people nail down a procedure so there are no mistakes.  So here’s my gift to you:  a HST Checklist for getting them right.  Every. Time.

To view this full-size and print it out, click here for the link.  I suggest putting it next to your sewing machine or cutting table:  someplace visible so you don’t miss it!

Inspired by the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War in 2011, this table runner gets its name from a battlefield near my home in north Georgia. The red-violet, mustard-yellow, and yellow-green reproduction fabrics give an historical feel to blocks that look like they’d be right at home in Civil War times. I’m not a quilt history expert; rather, I’m inspired by that period of history to create a project that commemorates our history in a muted, dull color palette.

Kennesaw Mountain Pattern Update:  $5.95 (free to subscribers – keep reading!) Add to Cart

If you can’t get to the quilt shop to select your own fabrics, no worries.  I’m offering a Kennesaw Mountain kit as well.  It’s best to choose your own fabrics for your color palettes, but we all have those times when life gets too busy and we just can’t get to it.  I’d rather you be able to do the lesson with a kit than not at all.

Kennesaw Mountain Kit:  $21.95 Add to Cart

Learn by Doing

March’s featured color is red-violet, and while most people think of fuschia, magenta, and raspberry, I chose a more elegant and historical palette.

The key to contributing a mood to a quilt is by orchestrating the intensity, or how bright, the colors are.  A child’s quilt relies on high-intensity, bright fabrics to convey an energetic, playful mood; reproduction quilts rely on duller, muted intensity fabrics to create an aged, historical feel.

Learn New Techniques

You’ll learn how to identify the dull fabrics in your stash by making your own intensity wheel, and selecting just the right fabrics for Kennesaw Mountain.

Forget quilt as desired!  I’ve included quilting designs, the very ones I used in my own project, based on simple quilting women of Civil War times would have included in their own quilt.  Color-0f-the-Month subscribers are also enjoying our weekly chats and videos, and are looking forward to a new video on how to do freemotion quilting next month.

To order the Color Mastery Table Runners enhanced e-pattern. click here: I Want to Master Color

I’m thrilled to announce I’m offering kits to go along with each monthly table runner in the Color of the Month series.  The Winter Bird and Love Apple kits are available in the online store, and they contain the same fabrics I used in my own quilt, with a few substitutions.  No worries, though, as you’ll love the other fabrics as much or even more than the ones I used.  I had so much fun putting together these fabrics and kits.

What I love about these kits is they allow you to play with color and value and still achieve great results in your project – just without the cutting.  In a perfect world, we would all choose our own fabrics, cut them, and piece our own table runner.  Then life happens.  Work gets crazy.  The kids get sick.  Church commitments call.  Before you know it, the month is gone and you’ve haven’t been able to get to any piecing or quilting.  Think of these as a back-up plan or a sweet treat for yourself.