You all know how much I enjoy photography. Over the years I have taken many photos on our property. Our barns and out buildings have always been an interesting photo subject for me. When long time internet friend, Julie Sefton, was writing her book, Build-a-Barn, no pattern construction, she asked if she could include some of my barn photos. Sure! I was thrilled to see that one of my photos graces the colophon page. Yeah, I had to look up the name of that page. It makes it sound fancy, doesn't it!
Her book walks you through the steps to build your own barn quilt blocks - from an inspiration photo to the finished barn block. There are also lovely photos of different kinds of barns sprinkled throughout the book. Here's another photo of my barn.
If you've ever wanted to make a barn or house block, or even just wanted to learn more about the free piecing technique, this book is for you! I love all of the creative interpretations Julie and her team of "barn builders" made.I love Julie's See Rock City quilt on the cover! Julie talks a lot about the making of this particular quilt. She had it pieced together as a finished top and then, after deciding that she didn't like it, cut it up and reworked the entire quilt layout. She really goes into a lot of detail about her process to get to this fabulous finished design. Often we only see the end product but I love that she shared the one that really wasn't as good as well as the newer version of her quilt.
You can read more about the book and barn projects in it here. Autographed copies of the book are available directly from Julie Sefton.
Here it is, all of that frantic and late night sewing last year was for this. A BOOK! I can hardly believe this is really almost a reality. My love of using scraps led me to write a whole book on scrap quilting!A huge thank you to all of you who encourage me to do what I love and try to use Every Last Piece of fabric in my scrap pile. There are scrap quilt designs in the book that you can use no matter how big your scrap pile is. The first quilts in the book are full on all scrap quilts. As you work your way through the book, the designs use fewer scraps the idea being that if you make all of the quilts in the book you can actually use up your scraps.The book, 
is now available on amazon for preorder and will be released next May. 
.Miss P, of course, perused all of the books that I brought home from market. In fact, she filled this one with sticky bookmarks and notes for me about which embroidery designs she likes.I flipped through and read her notes. She likes this one but she wants the mamma bird to keep a watchful eye on the baby. I thought these birds were particularly cute and simple enough to be stitched on thick terry/velour fabric, I added this little design to her Halloween elf shirt one day while she was at school. I love the transformations that fabric has taken - Bathrobe to costume to cute shirt with embroidery.
Aneela's book is full of sweet designs to dress up existing clothes or home dec items or add to just about any sewing project. There's even a pull out section with iron on tranfers of the designs included in the book. So many cute little animals, delightful girls, and fun every day objects to stitch.I know Miss P wants more of these designs embriodered on some of her other clothes. Just look at all those book marks! I think I'll let her do some of the embroidery though.
She loves the spruced up top!
While traveling in the car on our trip we listened to a recording of 
by Jeanne Birdsall. Our local librarian recommended it as a good book for the whole family. I think everyone liked the amusing story of four sisters and their adventures on summer vacation. I know I did.
They got into just enough trouble and adventure to keep everyone interested without overwhelming the youngest in the car. I have also just seen online that there are more books about the Penderwick sisters. We'll have to check those out!Speaking of stories about siblings, our family is starting a new chapter this month.Yesterday M moved out and into the dorm.
D will be moving this weekend. All three kids start school Tuesday after labor day. Our schedule here at home will be much more relaxed with only a first grader. P wrote M a letter when we got home from dropping him off at college. "Evrea day at skoole I will cri my ise aowt. Love P"I am hoping I'll be able to get lots of sewing done!
Yesterday was an exciting mail day. I got a copy of 
It is an honor to have two of my quilts in a book with some of my favorite quilt artists, 
I enjoyed reading this to P. It is very different from the Disney version of the story.I do have to warn you that Chapter 8 had me in tears.Chapter 8. Three pages. Life summed up in a discussion between two leaves.Yeah, I think you need to read this book.
