Wool Folk Art

I have been procrastinating updating my website.  It's not that I do it myself.  I have a wonderful, patient woman that does it for me, but it means getting all of the information together.  All of the photos, all of the dates, all of the changes that I want to make. But with !Quilt Fiesta! and my upcoming appearance on The Quilt Show, I thought it should be up to date for the throngs of readers that would be drawn to find out about me!  (Ha ha)

My husband has taken over my pattern department.  He has been the shipping department for a while.  Now he is organizing and printing them.  With the website update, he thinks that I should include all of the patterns that I ever designed. This includes my wool folk art patterns.   Many people don't know that I designed these other patterns in addition to my OyVey! patterns.  In the early part of the 2000's, I taught at this wonderful quilt shop owned by Cyndi Hershey in Montgomeryville, PA called The Country Quilt Shop.  I found a niche teaching primitive types of quilting and stitchery.  I designed a line of wool folk art patterns that I called Mother Hen Productions.  We sold them at the shop and were having a great run.  Unfortunately that ended when Cyndi sold the shop to a new owner. It became a different place to work and it was time for me to move on. 

Wool Pumpkin Pillow

 
So my new pattern department manager thought this would be a great time to resurrect them.  Folk art IS really timeless.  The funny thing is that in bringing these patterns and almost patterns back, I've had to write and re-write some of them.  Hey, I tell my new employee, I thought  you were supposed to be working for me.  Why are you giving me work to do?  But I am thankful that he is getting me organized.  I do need someone to organize me.

I really need a team to organize me.  All I want to do is sew. 

So now all of the wool patterns are available on my website and there are kits for some of them.  Can I get back to sewing now?

Speaking of wool, I have to share with you a book that is coming out in November.  It's called Pennies From Heaven.  My friend from The County Quilt Shop, Gretchen Gibbons, wrote it.  If you love working with wool, you'll love this book.  I hadn't spoken to Gretchen in quite a while.  It was such a coincidence then that both of our book proposals went to committee at Martingale at the same time.  We've been in touch frequently as we have gone through the publishing process together.  I've seen her first proof and the book is gorgeous.

You can pre-order it from Amazon.com.

To make a short story long, my website is now up to date with all my new work,  all my new patterns and an updated list of where my quilts have been.  Holly Knott is my wonderful webmaster and did all of the work.  The best thing about Holly is that she is a quilter too.  She understands the ins and outs of structuring a website for another quilter, although she does websites for anyone. I also envy her relationship with her mother.  Her mother is also an artist and they work together sometimes.  They now have a shop on Etsy with some beautiful items.