Quilting from the Road

Hello, Quilters! My name is Katie and I am a quilter. I am a fabric lover and a quilt-aholic.

I have a small business called Modern Cottage Creations which allows me to put my skills with a sewing machine to use and also feeds my quilting addiction. With my business I have been selling my handmade bags, table runners, and baby things at arts and crafts fairs in Wisconsin, in addition to doing some neat custom work. Now, with the kick off Fat Quarter Quilting’s new and improved website, I am launching my new blog. For those of you who are long time shoppers at Fat Quarter Quilting, you may remember seeing me at the shop. I spent a lot of fun time working at Fat Quarter and once I moved across the border, my time at the shop ended. With the launch of the new site I am happy to collaborating with this extremely creative group once again (even if I can only be cyber-present now).

In addition to being a quilter and attempting to begin my own sewing business, I work many different jobs throughout the year. One of them happens to be working with a travelling carnival. Last week we packed up many of our things into our house trailer and hit the road for the summer. At home I have a great sewing room with a sewing table, ironing table, and cutting table with plenty of room to lay out my quilts.

Now that we are in our house trailer my sewing space also happens to be the kitchen table. My kitchen table/sewing table also has to work interchangeably as my cutting table and ironing board.

With this small space some might be discouraged by sitting down to work on a new quilting project, but, like Tim Gunn might say on Project Runway, I “Make it work!” When you love fabric and quilting as much as I do it is harder to think about leaving the sewing machine at home than to worry about quilting in a small space.

I love to stay busy and make productive use of my time so I plan to have lots of great quilting projects and ideas to share with you. This is the first blog that I have written and I hope that you will bear with me while I find my blogging way and please, enjoy the ride!

Comments

Long time comin'

I had hoped that I would have more energy to work while I have the house trailer to myself, but unfortunately that was not the case today. After a slow start to the day and still a much needed nap, I was able to muster some energy and get to work sewing. I am a quilter who always has a TON of UFO’s. Sifting through half-done projects, I decided to start yet another one. I decided to pull out a selection of fabric that I had purchased almost exactly a year ago and get to work on the quilt that I had designed with that line in mind. These fabrics and this quilt have been on my mind for quite some time, so this one has certainly been a long time coming. The fabrics are from the “Serenity” line by Heather Mulder Peterson. I absolutely love her designs! I have a good collection of her books and have really enjoyed every line of fabric she has put out for Henry Glass & Co. “Serenity” is by far my favorite of her fabric lines...

Creating a Blog Planner

I like to think I'm a pretty organized gal. But with a busy life and lots of work, my mental best laid plans for blogging are quickly falling through the cracks. I ran across this great blog planner through Pinterest and I'm getting ready to give it a whirl! The printables that Lamberts Lately developed here are absolutely adorable and I can't wait to put them to use! Another awesome Pinterest find was this great tutorial from Just A Beautiful Life on to-do's and best practices for creating your own blogging binder. Between the great advice from both of these sites, I've got a start on my own blogging binder. I did a little office supply shopping (honestly, I love shopping for office supplies!) and picked up a cute colorful binder, some tab dividers, sheet protectors, loose leaf lined paper, and post it notes to put together with my freshly printed blog planning sheets. I have a three hole punch and nice markers at home to use already...

Mail Sack Bags!

My sister is a great sounding board when I want to talk about what to make at craft shows. She's not a sewist herself, but she has great fashion and style and loves to shop at craft shows! So she suggested a bit ago that I should make some cross body bags that are a little smaller than the regular size ones I already make. So I took her advice! The first cross body bag that I made ever was for myself a few years ago. I still use it for my daily use purse. The pattern that I used was the Mail Sack Bag from Pink Chalk Studio. After making that one, I started designing a bag that was more me, and would be cute to sell at craft shows. When I decided to make some bags in a new size I went right back to that pattern and got started. They are a great pattern company and luckily are happy if people are interested in making their bag to sell in small quantities at craft shows. So this week I whipped up four new bags. ...

Modern Cottage Creations

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