Rosalie Quinlan Designs

Going to the "mainland"

My MIL has told me that Tasmania is actually the "mainland" of Australia. It is to this mainland that Leanne and I will travel tomorrow to teach for Leonie and Deirdre at The Quilted Crow. We are quite excited to catch up with the girls again! Actually, they were both in Houston so Melly and I have seen them recently. Quilt Market just isn't the place to catch up with friends when you have a booth to attend to!

The girls from the Quilted Crow spoiled us terribly the last time we taught for them and we are so happy to be coming back. I'm sure we will meet some of you and also catch up with the women we met last time.

Since returning home, I have set my hand to some furniture "renovation". I purchased an old screen room divider, was given an antique fire screen and have an old blouse chest. These pieces have been stripped, sanded and painted. They are starting to look quite good actually.

The next step is to create the fabric panels for the screens and cover the blouse chest drawers in fabric. I bet you don't need three guesses to work out which fabric I will be using! I am making over these pieces for display at the Australian Quilt Market. Charles Parsons will have a booth featuring their fabric companies including LECIEN. As part of their booth they will display "Grandmother's Flower Garden". After seeing all the gorgeous displays at Houston I was keen to put my fabric to good use in the booth here. In Houston Melly and I are forced to put a booth together with string and pins. It is much more fun to have access to furniture and props when a show is in your home city.

I will show you photos as (if) the pieces come to life!

Rosalie xx

P.S. I think I deserve a special gardening award for letting a dandelion weed grow to 8ft tall before I found it in my garden! Not everyone is that talented!

Home from Houston

Well, where do I start??? Houston was amazing! What a blast! Melly and I had an awesome time with our husbands at the Quilt Market. After setup, I spoke at School House with Brenda Riddle about our new fabric lines with LECIEN. It was very exciting but also quite nerve-wracking! It was a full house with standing room only and I must admit that nerves almost got the better of me! I think it went quite well though. The next event was our booth at Sample Spree. We had not done this before so didn't really know what to expect. When the doors opened at 8pm hundreds of women came flooding in to buy whatever they could get their hands on! It was a bit of a feeding frenzy especially around the Moda booth. I did manage to purchase a delicious fat quarter bundle of the new French General fabric called Rural Jardin. It is gorgeous! My fabric bundles with LECIEN sold out in the first half hour so I was very excited! We also did really well with our sample bags of patterns so it was a worthwhile thing to do. I am sure we will do it next time also.

The next day was the first day of Market and here is a photo of our booth

The next two photos are from "stop staring and start sewing" I hope they don't mind as I have very few photos of my own as we didn't have time to take very many!

Here is a photo of Melly, Brenda and myself. It was such an honour to meet Brenda after all our emails back and forth!

LECIEN had made a whole booth just to display "Grandmother's Flower Garden" which was a huge thrill. Elizabeth from "The Late Bloomer" and Pam from "Pam Kitty Morning" Had made some gorgeous samples from my fabric for this part of the booth. It was great to catch up with those girls again! One of these years I'm going to have to remember to take some more photos at Market! If anyone has any good ones of our booth PLEASE email them to me!

Well, I do feel like I'm back on deck after feeling a bit jetlagged for a few days. I am longing to get into my studio and see what comes out! I promise it won't be this long between posts again.

Enjoy your creation!

Rosalie xx

 
 

Nellie's Sewing Bag

I am still making new samples for Houston. I really enjoy all the new looks I am achieving. Here is the "New" Nellie's sewing bag....

 

Of course I made two - why not? This time I used my fabrics and Matilda's own bag batting which is my new favourite product. It has given so much structure to the bags. Here you can see the inside pockets.

 

It all ties up by threading the handle through the two loops in the top.

 

Anyway, I know lots of you have made this cute little sewing bag but it's always been a favourite of mine.

The preparations for Houston continue and it is all becoming quite exciting now. We can't wait to see friends we have made over there. I hope Pam and Di are up to sharing a meal at our favorite teppanyaki restaurant! We are always so happy to visit there and get some fresh vegetables (fairly scarce in Houston!) Six sleeps to go!

Rosalie xx