I am still sewing and quilting of course, but find little time to write and share photos beyond sporadic Instagram posting. I've been teaching a little bit too, including a super fun seasonal Foundation Paper Piecing workshop at Needlework here in Hamilton last month.
One major thing I have to share (if you've been following the news I'm sure you already know some of the ins-and-outs) is the demise of my Craftsy shop. Not to go into too many of the nitty-gritty details, but basically, Craftsy decided to shut down the shops of many independent designers (including some very well-know people in the quilt industry); even those whose shops weren't shut down are being told which patterns they are and are not allowed to sell (for serious).
I was told by Craftsy staff that some designers would be invited back to the platform later in the year, but I think they've really burned some bridges here (I know designers who weren't culled but who are leaving anyway because of this). I've been with Craftsy since the very beginning and have the personal emails from when they first launched where they asked me to help them promote the site. We were in talks for me to do classes for them, but I didn't feel ready at the time. They actively promoted my patterns in blog posts, newsletters, on FB, etc. And then this. It doesn't feel good.
Designers were only given a week's notice that this was happening, and that week fell over the holidays (my shop was shut down on Dec 28th). Suffice it to say, that left little to no time to research new options for hosting my free patterns and templates. All pay patterns were already in my Etsy shop, so that's good to go but a few sets of free templates and cross stitch patterns were only on Craftsy. Those templates will, unfortunately, remain unavailable until I can find another good hosting medium. I'll let you know when they have a new home!
And last but not least so that this post isn't completely devoid of pictures, and to give an older tutorial a little bit of love, let's take a look back at the Pieced Center String Blocks tutorial!
I posted this tutorial 8.5 years ago and it is still one of the most popular posts on the entire site. On occasion, people still send me pictures of quilts using this tutorial (or the sister coaster tutorial). So in honour of Moda hosting a "String Quilt Along" (follow #modastringquilt on IG), I thought I'd remind everyone about this little beauty!
8-9 years ago, string quilt were all the rage in the quilting community, so this was just my little take and adaptation of a more traditional style. It's so fun to see that strings quilts are, once again, having a little mini resurgence!
Anyhoo, I best sign off now, and no promises, but I will do my very utmost to not let another year and a half go by without posting!
