Hey Kids. Remember when I decided to take November off? Ya, that didn’t work out. We have been shipping out patterns everyday, it’s lovely but totally exhausting. I decided instead to take December off. That didn’t go so well either. So here I sit without my coveted time off, I am thinking about taking 2011 off. I am hopeful that it will work out.

Now on to the point of this post. I have a confession to make… I have never actually made Spiked Punch. I wrote the pattern and had several people test the pattern but I never had a chance to make it myself. I had a few scraps left over from Parisville when I was making my quilts for Quilt Market this fall. So, I finally made it! Yay for me! I used a gray pin dot for the background. It turned out good and now all is right again in Pinkerville. It always bothered me that I never tested that pattern myself. I do suffer from a touch of controleverythinginreach syndrome, I’m not proud of it but I deal with my shortcomings head on.

Angela did an amazing job on the quilting as usual. Now that she is quilting out of my Mom’s Quilt Shoppe I get to abuse her time even more effectively which suits me just fine. I do my best to let her take a break when she starts to turn pale.

What’s a bunch of new fabric without some patterns? It’s like a sandwich without peanut butter, lame. Anywhoo, My new quilt patterns are super rad and are finally available! You can find them here… or shipping out to quilt shops everywhere, all week long! Yay for commerce! It keeps me in ink and paper through the winter.

Parisville is beginning to ship all over this fine planet of ours! Yay, let’s be excited! In the spirit of celebration I bring you another process post… This time just in pictures, like a silent film. Imagine me pantomiming the good parts: You can call me Buster Pinkton if you feel like it.

If me talking about me interests you then we may have a bunch in common, we should get together and go bowling or something. If this is entirely uninteresting to you then I respect your decision to join a different league. We will probably beat you though, I rock the bumper lanes and I love borrowed shoes.

I am open to names for our team if you have any…

Quilt Market is Weird. We all work super hard for three days of “show”. I kinda love it though. Parisville is my 7th fabric collection and this Market was my very first booth. I took it as an opportunity to re design my guest room. I am a multi-tasker at heart so it seemed like the right thing to do. It was like a great big tax write off shopping spree. Isn’t that what life is all about? I think it is. Every item I purchased or made was for the express purpose of that extra bedroom. My future guests will be so pleased.

The idea for the booth, besides just decorating my home, was to make a little Parisian salon. I made a lot of little hair pictures and painted everything this surreal mint clay color. There was stuff everywhere! I loved it and I think other people were into it too. At one point the line to get your picture taken with Ty Pennington wrapped around my booth. It was a good opportunity for me to exercise my entertaining skills. A few jokes and a sassy little tap dance did the trick. Luckily the line wound down before I got saucy enough to start singing.

In the excitement of all that is Quilt Market I may have forgotten to take pictures of my booth. Lame, yes but not a total loss. Luckily other people think a bit more on the practical side than I do. Miss Julie let me borrow her pics. She has a ton more over at her place. The girl is thorough to say the least.

I have been majorly M.I.A. from my entire life lately, this, of course includes my blog. Your feelings of abandonment and neglect may be satisfied by the knowledge that everything I have been doing in my absence has been for y’all. I am now up to 11 quilts, two pillows, three purses, 37 tiny paintings, a new fabric collection for spring 3 pieces of refinished furniture, a fully electrified booth for market, new quilt labels and other stuff I can’t think of because my brain is now officially mush. It resembles something close to oatmeal at this point. I expect it to start pouring out of my ears at any moment. I have paper towels on hand, the strong kind, they are also quilted but not by me.

Oh! the pillows… cute, right? They are each one block from my Cartwheels pattern. It worked out pretty well if you ask me. I used my Parisville scraps, there is not much left. Every time I work on something I think “this is my favorite color way”. The thought lasts just about long enough for me to get to the next project. I always imagined that my mom secretly loved me more than my brother and sisters. I am still pretty sure about that but my emotional attachment to Parisville in all of its colors are making me have doubts, I don’t like it. Maybe she could love us all the same? Weird.

Quilt Market… Three weeks and counting. I’m taking November off.

I often ask myself what it takes to make something pretty look even more awesome. The answer I’ve come up with is simple, make it shiny! What is it about shiny plasticy things that make my heart skip a beat? My laminated sample fabric finally came in and I squealed like a silly little girl, which isn’t terribly far off base.

It lasted about 7 minutes and is now in a million different pieces and draped over every conceivable surface looking for a permanent home. This little foot stool has been sitting in a corner for AGES! I knew I would need it someday. It was a rusty piece of work with this sad little tapestry thing hanging off of  it like it wanted me to euthanize it. A bit o’ paint and a dab of Parisville fixed her right up. Yay! Now I just need some fancy shoes that hurt so much that I need to rest my toes on something lovely and I’m all set.

I get asked a lot about how I come up with my ideas. My thought process is anything but linear. I have been holding onto this issue of Vogue magazine since September of 2006 when it was released. I loved the idea of a Teen Queen and the movie, Marie Antoinette, by Sophia Coppola was mesmerizing for me. I have no idea what the dialogue was because the volume on the visuals were at like 10,000 decibels. My eyes took over and apparently took all the function out of my ears.

I consider myself to be a maximalist, if there is a swirl, a drape, a flourish, a color I will use it, multiply it, blow it up and roll around in it. This whole era of decadence has been screaming at me for 4 years. I finally got the chance to do it.

This is my idea landscape. It’s how  I start thinking about something. The photos set the mood, I start gathering colors and making sketches. More often than not some Dr. Seuss characters will creep into the pics to see what’s going on. They are good at letting me know when something is getting too stuffy. When a picture is finally starting to form in my head I will begin to draw more seriously. I usually know exactly what the collection will look like before I ever start drawing. Then it’s like I’m my own production slave. I like working for myself. I am a good boss, fair but firm and I always bring good snacks.

I have never been called a tease by so many strangers in my entire life! Usually people get to know me before they start calling me names. I mean, it’s the polite thing to do.

So here it is… Parisville! Finally! In all of it’s glory. My sample yardage should arrive in a few weeks so for now I leave you with this. Enjoy!

I don’t have a final date for availability but I will be debuting the collection at Fall Quilt Market in October. I believe it will start shipping in November but don’t hold me to that. As soon as I know, you will will know. Now is the time to start letting your local shops know you want it!

Oh, and how about some laminated fabrics? Sound good? Okay…

As long I am waiting for my fabric to come in I thought I might just start at the beginning and work my way up to the present. It seems like the most orderly and logical way to proceed.

So imagine this… There’s this 21st century teenager with mad style and a tendency toward the over dramatic.  Maybe she doesn’t have a lot of money for fancy clothes and junk so she exercises her creativity with a bottle of hairspray and a well placed bow. She sits in the back of a coffee shop, shrouded in a veil of aqua net, reading a second hand copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or maybe something from the Dr. Suess oeuvre, depending on her mood.

People look at her, they stare even. The people wonder if that small corner of the world lacks gravity like that mystery spot in the Redwoods where the ball rolls uphill. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t notice. I’m pretty sure her shoes are untied, a dilemma that seems infinitely more pressing than the many wondering eyes. I mean, how does one bend over with all of that hair on their head?

Maybe she’s just a regular girl cursed with too much hair and no way to tame it so she just accepts it for what its worth and works with what she’s got. I think I would want to know her. I would probably design a collection of fabric just for her. I might even call it Parisville…