My New Pattern - The Charm Square Bed Quilt

I'm so excited to have another new pattern being released this week! This time its another quilt that is really beginner friendly.

The idea behind this quilt is to give you one pattern that will suit every bed in your house.

Basically this pattern includes instructions to make every size quilt you will ever need from a cot size quilt right up to a King!

This quilt can be made even easier by using precut 5" Charm square packs.

 Heres my Chloe being a supermodel :)

 My girls had so much fun tickling each other so they could keep smiling while Mummy took a thousand pictures hehehe.

So here it is the cover of my new pattern. Remember to ask your local Patchwork shop to order it in for you from Pattern Press or visit one of my retail stockists on the left side of this page.

I hope you like it!

Hugs Paula

My Sydney Trip and Prize winners!

Last week my mum, my baby and I headed up to Sydney for the Trade Show and Quilt Show at Darling Harbour. We were so luck to have a family friend at Kirrabilly to stay with and therefore had the most amazing view! On our last night we headed up stairs to the top of the units and OMG! The view was just breathtaking!

 This is my favourite shot.

 Can you imagine, we were so lucky to stay at their amazing home, so Auntie Julie and Unncle Charles Thank You!!!
The trade show was great! We got to see some amazing products and meet some fantastic people! A little bit of Quilting industry star spotting was a highlight too ;)
This is part of the Pattern Press stall which housed all my designs! Mine are on the left of the chair. It was so great to see it all together.

 At the Quilt and Craft Show along with the amazing quilts, some of my favourite things where these new ribbons by Kaffe Fassett. Just gorgeous!!

 Heres another shot of the Harbour, it was just sooo stunning!

Anyway we had a heap of fun and spent waaayyy to much money, but thats all part of it right? I picked up some awesome new products and I hope to find the time soon to do some reviews on here for you to join in the fun.

I also was very slack and forgot to announce the winners of my new patterns. I've done the draw and Congrats to Nadine and Rita! I will be in contact ladies.

I hope you have a great week and will be back soon with some new (or new to me) product reviews :)

Hugs Paula

My 2 new patterns available soon and a giveaway!

I'm so ridiculously excited :) I have finally finished my next two patterns and they are being printed as I type. Yeah!

As you may have guessed I'm a huge fan of the Sweetwater girls, I love love love their fabrics and purely out of coincidence I have made up my first new pattern using 2 of their ranges. 'Pure and Sunkissed'

This is my first quilt pattern and I'm so proud of it! It is call the 'Love is all around' Quilt. This quilt is designed for every mum or grandmother who I have heard say "They just grow so quick!" I wanted to design a quilt that was fun and cute for a baby, but was still suitable for a toddler, teen and even adult, so this was what I came up with.

 This is the boy version and is a cot quilt size, but is easily 'upsized' by increasing the size of the blocks! I used 2 Charm packs for this quilt, but you could easily make it with 2 layer cakes for a huge quilt!

I also designed a girl version and decided to make this one in just 2 colours, I really love how this one came out and as we backed it with flannel this quilt is soooo cuddly!

The 'Love is all around quilt pattern' will be available from Pattern Press and your favourite quilt shops in the next week, depending on the volcanos and how it affects distribution.

My second new pattern is just so much fun! My kids love to count down to everything! They countdown to Christmas of course, Easter and birthdays, so I decided to design some toys that make counting down so much fun!
So here it is, the 'How Many Sleeps - Countdown Cubes' Pattern.

 First up of course who doesn't count how many sleeps there is until their Birthday? ;)

 And of course Christmas,

 Heres the Easter block with a cute little egg with bunny ears!

 I love the Halloween block, but for those of us who are very patriotic, I'll be putting up a free design for Australia Day soon, so if you don't celebrate Halloween you can just replace this block with the free Australia Day block.

 Its always fun to count down to holiday time,

 And finally the ultimate countdown is to the New Year!

As well as being fun, these blocks are really educational, teaching kids number recognition and how to count backwards.
I'm also really excited about the 'How many sleeps - Countdown Cubes' because they are my first pattern that will include iron on transfers of the embroidery designs. How cool is that!!

To celebrate I think we need to have a giveway!, So if you would like to win a copy of either of my new patterns, just leave me a message on this post and I will draw a winner when I get back from the Trade show in Sydney next friday the 24th of June at 9am. Don't forget to tell your friends! If we get lots of entries I might give away some of my other patterns too! So tell everyone you know :)

A huge thanks goes to my Mum, Lesley! Without her, neither of these patterns would have been finished! She is so amazing, her embroidery skills are out of this world, and is always quick to offer her 'unpicking skills' when I make a boo boo ;)
She also helped piece the quilts and did a fantastic job of quilting them too. So Thank you Nan, Your the best! Check out her ebay shop for gorgeous Batiks!

I hope you love my new designs as much as I do!! Remember to ask your favourite quilt or fabric shop to order in my patterns from Pattern Press.

Hugs Paula

With 4 kids, how do you find the time?

I hear this question on a regular basis, so I thought I'd show you :) This is how I get most of my machine work done.

Emma just wasn't happy this afternoon, so she helped me finish, rather almost finish my next pattern.

I have 2 new patterns being launch at the Sydney Quilting expo, and photography is due on Wednesday, so its busy busy busy around here :)

I had another exciting day last week when I hosted my first workshop! I was rediculously nervous but the ladies were awesome and did a great job on my softie patterns. They were too shy to have their pictures up here, so Sue took a picture of me. eeek, I'm not usually this side of the camera.

It was so much fun and the results were fantastic!

Hugs Paula

Lots of stitching and a giveaway

Last Saturday I took my beautiful Mum in to work and we had a brilliant day finishing off some quilts we were making for the shop. This is one of them, Designed by Zan Taylor this is the Alpha Beezy Quilt lots of applique but this is a really great fun and pretty easy quilt to make!

 I've been telling you about the kids school holiday workshops that we are holding in July, well this is one of the projects that the 7 - 10 year olds will be making. Its a little pincushion that is also a bracelet. The kids can take the pincushion part off if they like and can just wear the bracelet.

 They will also be making this needlebook, they will learn to gather ribbon to make a flower, they'll be sewing on a button, they'll do some hand stitching and will even have a go on a machine! Should be a fun day!

 These are both of the kids projects, perfect for beginners too, they give you a taste of lots of different styles of stitching, we'll be putting kits together soon.

Valerie at My Patch (my work) is having a giveaway on her facebook page. If you'd like to win 4 Fat Quarters of my favourite range, Sunkissed by Moda, (the fabrics I used in the cushion in the picture) head over to the My Patch facebook page and click 'like'. When we get to 65 likers Val will do the draw.
Don't forget to tell her I sent you :)

Hugs Paula

A sneek peak and the kids workshop project

I have been working away and have almost finished my next pattern, YEAH!!!

So I thought I'd give you a little sneek peak.

Huge Thanks goes out to Nan (my mum) for doing the amazing embroidery!! She is so incredibly talented!

I've also been working on the kids workshop projects, this is what the 11 and ups will be working on.

I made this gorgeous little cushion with the amazing Sweetwater range from Moda. I am so addicted to this range and I think I really need to make a quilt for my bed with this range, it is just so stunning.

Anyway if you or your kids are interested in joining in a workshop on the school holidays give Val a call at the shop on 02 4455 4087.

Hugs Paula

PS. I'm looking for some test sewers of my next pattern. If you have young kids (0 - 2) could you please email me or leave a comment on this post with the age and gender of your kids and I will get back to you soon with the details. paula.storm@gmail.com

My big news!

 I hinted at some really big news a week or so ago on Facebook and the time has come to spill the beans :)

I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by the extremely talented Helen Stubbings from Hugs and Kisses, shes the creator of Colourque. Anyway she is also the owner of Pattern Press.

Pattern Press is the distributor of patterns by amazing artists like Monica Poole of Moonshine Designs, One Red Robin, and heaps more! Anyway Helen offered to distribute my patterns for me!!

Can you imagine!! Anyway I laughed and cried and was shaking for hours!! Before I replyed rather quickly with a big fat YES! :)

So the last week has been filled with redesigning my pattern covers and instructions which will now be in a booklet format, I think this will be great for people like me who constantly loose pages of patterns that I'm working on.

So heres a look at the new covers:

       

The next piece of exciting news is that Helen will be taking my patterns to Spring Market in Salt Lake City next month! I'm just so overwhelmed with how quickly this has all happened, but really really happy too :) so back to the sewing room to stitch up some more samples...

So keep a lookout for my patterns in your favourite shop, and if they don't have them ask them to contact pattern press, The patterns aren't up on their website yet, but can be ordered by emailing the Pattern Press team orders@patternpress.com.au or by phone on +61 362787507.

In other news I started my new job at My Patch fabrics in Milton yesterday, it was sooo much fun, how can you get paid to work in such an amazing shop!! I was totally exhausted at the end of the day, but it was a heap of fun too :)

Hugs Paula