Folk Song Notebook Cover

If I had to pick a favorite collection from 2015 so far, it might very well be Folk Song by Anna Maria Horner. Her beautiful designs and stunning range of colors absolutely make my heart sing, and I knew that I wanted to use these prints to make the cover of my new sewing notebook.

While I designed this particular cover myself, I was heavily influenced by Jennie's adorable Scrappy Little Planner Tutorial which you absolutely must see. Mine is far more simplistic, but it works for what I needed. I added a small amount of quilting to the log cabin design on the front, leaving the fussy cut bouquet on the back to shine all by itself. Every time I look at this cover, my breath catches again at those incredibly saturated colors.

I added an elastic pen holder to the inside of the cover and bound the whole thing in yarn dyed Essex linen in leather. This mini notebook from Target is my latest idea for keeping all my ideas in one spot. Now I have a beautiful place to store my notes on project designs, blogging topics, and sewing classes. If you look closely, you can see that I too am enjoying Creativebug's brilliant series on How to Design Fabric. I'm hoping to sneak in another class tonight along with a cup of tea and a chocolate chip cookie. It's become my favorite way to end the day.

Happy Easter, friends!

Mark Your Calendars

It's been a whirlwind of vacation prep at our house as I get the bags packed for our week in Arizona with family. I'm recruiting all the prayers I can get for safety and sanity as we make our eight hour drive tomorrow with the girls. I finished up one final gift last night for the girls' adopted great grandmother, a book cover with handles. She's an avid reader and has a few of these covers already which are falling apart from overuse. Hopefully this will be a good replacement.

I used Chairs in Grass for the exterior from Laurie Wisbrun's wonderful Tufted Tweets collection. The inside is a grey and white houndstooth from my local quilt shop. It's simple, modern, and bright -- just the way I hoped it would turn out.

I'm bringing my laptop with me as well as some hand sewing, but posts will probably be pretty sporadic over the next week. We'll see how it goes. However, I couldn't resist giving a little sneak peek at a big event that will be kicking off here at Fabric Mutt on July 9th:

I can hardly wait to share more. Stay tuned, folks!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday & the Let's Get Acquainted Link-up.