Welcome to the Quilt Designers Blog Tour

I can't believe I decided to show my "studio" to the world.

Studio is a very loose term pertaining to my work space.

It is a long narrow room on the back of our home that has many functions.

At the moment my "studio"

is also my "office"

my "shipping department"

my "sewing space"

my "storage" area.

my "design wall"

and "ironing station".

I did volunteer for this tour because I have a new "Studio" in my immediate future.

The new area is an old guest house at the back of the driveway. It is about 20' X 24" with a kitchen and bath on the back. We are almost to the painting stage and the flooring will go down on April 29.

Please come back to visit this blog in May to see my "New Studio".

I really must add that for many years my studio was a corner of the den or the kitchen table.

I have come a long way even now.

The bluebonnets are up and blooming in Texas.

My teaching road trip will continue soon.

Next on the agenda was Savannah, GA.

I have exciting news.

I have a quilt on Page 20 of the Spring 2009 issue of

Better Homes and Gardens Quilts and More magazine.

It is a very simple but fun quilt.

Be sure to check it out.

I also have new fabrics that I am playing with.

They are from Moda Fabrics.

This is The Caroler by Mary Engelbreit.

 This is Snippets by American Jane.

I am using the Jelly Rolls, Layer Cakes, and Turnovers 

in a new series of Kindergarten quilts.

I will post pictures as I make the samples.

Infatuation 

I know you fondle it when you wander through your favorite quilt or fabric store. 

You run your hands over pillowcases in the department store.

What fabric can make you consider giving up chocolate or wine? 

For me, it’s silk.  How about you?  

Admit it, you want to wrap yourself in it!

Hello there!  I’m Della Quimby, owner of della Q. 

That’s my boyfriend’s dog, Lucky.  She is as sweet as she looks. 

I’m basically her butler; I open the door to let her in and out all day long.

Are you participating in Debbie’s latest contest? 

Be sure you join in to win a bundle of della Q’s taffeta silk.

All you have to do is go to my website della Q and sign up to receive my newsletter. 

Our fabric is made in Vietnam. 

We have been using our fabric in the manufacture of our

knitting needle cases and bags. 

Have you seen them? 

This is our most popular needle case, The Que™ for circular needles.

Many of my customers were starting to ask about just buying my silk. 

At first, I said, “I don’t sell just the silk”. 

Stupid!  I quickly realized that if I spend time in Vietnam

selecting fabric and designing our pieces,

why couldn’t I just have the fabric manufactured for quilters and sewers? 

TaDa! della Q Textiles!  Ok, it wasn’t that easy, but let’s pretend it was. 

Check out our silk collection, including kits with Debbie’s patterns.

I spend about three to four weeks a year in Vietnam

working with our production process. 

Have you been?  You should go. 

The food is great, the people are amazing and the textiles are luscious. 

The currency is the “Dong”; my boyfriend thinks that is really funny. 

I know, immature.  Check out all the vibrant colors.

Blah, blah, blah.  Enough about me, let’s talk silk. 

What’s the secret to working with it?  Fusible interfacing.  That’s it. 

Fuse it before you cut it with an ultra lightweight interfacing

so you don’t change the hand. 

I’ll share another secret with you about della Q silk. 

It’s washable. 

It does take on a bit of a vintage look, but frankly, I quite like it. 

The piece below was washed in a front loader with a mild detergent and then air-dried. 

It also tends to come out a bit brighter. 

More Contest Fun

We had so much fun with our contest on this blog that

I want to tell you about a couple of current contests.

 The first contest is being held by my friend and colleague

at della Q.

Della designs and imports silk taffeta.

She has beautiful finished products designed for the knitting

 industry and absolutely gorgeous silk taffeta yardage.

She sells to retail customers and also to wholesale customers.

If you are a shop owner be sure to check out the wholesale area.

Della will be giving away six fat quarter bundles that equal

NINE YARDS of silk fabric.

That is six bundles to one lucky person.  

All you have to do to enter the contest is go to her website

della Q and  sign up for her newsletter.

This contest will end February 28 @ midnight.

As many of you know, I am new to the blog phenomenon.

I would like for you to let me know what some of your

favorite blogs are and why.

I would love to visit them to see what is of interest to all of you.

Check back tomorrow because Della Quimby from della Q

is going to be my guest blogger for the day.    

Hello!

My name is Lila Tueller, and I'm really happy to be featured on the Calico Carriage Quilt Designs Blog!

To introduce myself, I am a stay at home mother of seven children and grandmother to one darling little granddaughter. 

I have five of my children living at home, so I can relate to all of you young moms, and you grandma's too!

I am an avid lover of fabric, and have been sewing since I was a young girl. I have a huge collection of fabrics, which is in a constant state of flux.  I have been designing things for myself my children and my friends forever, and just recently decided to take it all a step further and landed myself a partnership with Moda fabrics and United Notions doing fabric collections twice annually, as well as patterns to feature those fabrics.

So far it has been more fun than I could have ever imagined!

Although I wouldn't consider myself a traditional quilter, I do enjoy making quilts, which are usually a little on the funky/nontraditional/out of the ordinary side of the spectrum. So far I have only two quilt patterns out, but I plan on making more!

I think what I really love doing is making bags, all sorts of bags. I used to make and sell them at specialty boutiques, and on Ebay. I soon learned that there weren't enough hours in the day to sew for all the people that wanted them; hence the turn to pattern designing.

Of course I still sew them for gifts and special requests, and for myself! But I love coming up with new bag ideas, and I'm sure I will continue doing that for a long time!

I hope you will enjoy sewing with my new line of fabric coming out in February:

 "Soire'e"

 It is a fun and fllrty mix of spring brights and pastels, and will be great for many of your spring and summer sewing projects. Here's a little sneak peek!

Thanks for reading, and keep sewing!

All my best,

Lila

Thank you Lila for sharing your journey with us.

Be sure to visit Lila's Blog.

The contest is still going on.

Visit the January 9 posting to see all the rules.

 (click on the 9 in the calender on the right)

We have new entries everyday and everyone is having a good time.

The Moda Fabric Matcher site is a lot of fun the play with.

We had one person do four projects!

We did see a few celebrities at Fall Quilt Market.

Becky and Jeanne took this picture of Marie Osmond at her fabric booth.

Mark Lipinski came by my booth and stopped to visit.

Market Report

I am home from Fall Quilt Market in Houston and finally rested and ready to go to the next project. My good friend and helper Becky went with me to market to help and I also had help from Paula Ward and Jeanne Kuchelmeister. I showed four new patterns.

Shooting Stars

 which has three sizes (twin, queen and king). Everyone liked it because it has six different stars that make up the center of the quilt.

 Radiant Stars

which has two sizes (wall or baby and throw). It is really fast and easy to make with any style fabric.

I made the cover quilt with Moda Tradition and the wall quilt with Moda  Love is in the Air by Deb Strain.

Post & Beam

which is lap quilt for the contemporary quilter to use the new bold graphic prints like Wonderland by MoMo for Moda.

It is a wonderful fabric with all sorts of designs.

The last pattern is

Abstract Harmony

I designed it to use the beautiful silks by dellaQ.  Della and I have teamed up to encourage quilters and sewers to use silks in their projects. I made two quilts and four table runners for Della to show in her booth. She is making kits that will be available at your local quilt shops. If the shops don’t have what you are looking for you can check out Della’s website to order from her. I will also be stocking the kits for students taking my new workshop The Road to Success With Silk. The workshop will cover many aspects of working with silk like how to prevent raveling, to wash or not to wash, what kind of needles to use, etc. 

This is my booth before we decorated

and this is a picture of the finished booth.

That is Paula in the picture.

I did three School House sessions while there. School House is mini classes on the day before the exhibits open. We show new patterns, new fabrics, new techniques and have fun at the same time. I did two sessions for Dell to show samples made with her silks.

We also gave out information on how to use and handle the silk. We had good attendance at both. I did one session to show my new patterns and had standing room only. All were a great success. We also did some great networking with publishers of books and magazines. There will be numerous new and exciting things happening this year at Calico Carriage Quilt Designs.

Tomorrow I will show you some of the celebrities we saw while in Houston.

It is getting close to Fall Quilt Market in Houston and things are really crazy around here. I have very little free time but want to show you some great fabrics I am working with and tell you about a recipe exchange.

These are fabrics from the Soiree' collection by Lila Tueller for Moda Fabrics

These are fabrics from the Wonderland collection by MoMo for Moda Fabrics

I will show you the finished quilts soon. They are so cute!!

I am participating in a great Halloween recipe swap at TheArmChairChef.com. Tink Board is running it and doing a great job. Check there everyday for a new recipe. The apple pie sounds devine!

I really have to get back to work. Today I am working on two lap quilts and several table runners out of silk.

I recently went to Brenham, Texas to give a lecture and teach a Shining Star class for the Friendship Quilt Guild. In case you don't know, Brenham is the home of BlueBell ice cream. A great time was had by all including me.

 I had great students who worked very hard.

And they served a fabulous pot luck lunch.

This is a quilt made by Mabel Dimick.

 She used the Broken Star pattern from my Simple Stars Beautiful Quilts book.

My hosts were Karen & Mike.

They have a beautiful home in the country with a great lake on the land.

This is the Putter Shed Mike built for Karen. Don't you love it?

They treated me to a wonderful dinner at Volare in Brenham. One of the things I love most about traveling to teach is meeting the wonderful people.

The ladies in Brenham sewed, visited and had a lot of fun.

Just a couple of stars ready to put together.  

 One student brought her Carpenter's Star quilt top to show.

I have to get to work now. I am working on quilts and patterns for Fall Quilt Market.

Tomorrow I will show you some of my progress.