Quilting In The Robyn's Nest

My machine is off for repairs... and I am soooooo frustrated. I have never been so attached to a sewing machine. But she served me well- Here are hi lights from July:

I am participating in the

Free-motion Challenge Quilting

Along with Angela Walters

She reminds all it takes practice to get better at free-motion quilting & practice is so much more fun when you are doing it with friends. Sew- she host these group Machine Quilting Along!

We all buy the quilt print outs and threads & join the FB groups and watch the videos and feel like we are sewing with others.

I got a very late start courtesy of

covid/strep/ BLECHHHHHH!!!!

And now I am on hold for final section until I get my machine back... but I did get a few weeks worth of work in on the one week I had!

Alas... it was this breathtaking

embroidery Diva that overtook my machine.

Meet Cassie the Crazy Crafter

from Sweet Pea Embroidery

Layer by Layer I follow the pattern

changing threads and fabrics...

I was thrilled with these 2 blocks...

But then trouble arrived...

And here is where she jammed...

and stopped accepting a bobbin :(

Now it is in the hands of my dealer...

and my sewing space is abandoned.

Creating Big Block 3 in my La Pass/Nova...

Visiting my family in Florida- my sis really surprised me with the gift of an Indian chief from Tula Pinks Spirited Animals line.

Spirit Animal had a real roller coaster of a release. The primary fabric in the collection was pulled after pressure from Native Americans... once it was leaked the Indian chief created was meant to be female.

Here is TP initial words she shared about the collection:

Spirit Animal

by Tula Pink ~ FreeSpirit Fabrics

Once upon a time there was an undiscovered island that evolved for thousands of years beyond the burdensome limitations of reality. Imagination was both currency and religion in this place. You could be anything that you wished as long as you had the daring to imagine it so. The animals didn’t know that they were supposed to be brown so they dressed themselves in shades of purple, orange, pink and green. Every being was the ruler of their own reality and existed solely within the make believe of their own minds, because they could dream it then it would become real here. One day a princess of her own reality, having spent the morning in the usual way, cuddling with grizzly bears and lounging on rocks with otters came to lie in a field of wildflowers. Yearning for conversation but too comfortable to seek it out she began to speak aloud to no one in particular. As she paused to collect her thoughts, the field that she lay in spoke back. The wild flowers that cocooned her had imagined themselves as her friends and the magic of the island had made it so. The wild flowers told her of a place where she could mine for stone to make the jewelry and elaborate trinkets that she so loved. This stone contained the essence of the island and was where new inhabitants were developed and honed over years, crafted from the very thing that made everything here so special.

There have been rumors and questionable sightings of this place going back through the cen- turies. Once, an explorer even claimed to have captured some of this magical stone from the island itself but as he sailed away from the island the stone began to lose it’s color, the sparkle that was once so blinding began to fade and by the time he landed on the shores of his own home it had turned into nothing more than a plain gray rock. No one believed this traveler as he had no proof to speak of and his wild stories of vibrant color and self aware foliage was chalked up to too many months on the open sea. His tales became the stuff of fiction, going the way of mermaids and dragons but he knew in his heart what he had seen and that he would never, ever forget it.

"Spirit Animal is a vibrant and personal collection of prints that I designed with the power of imagination in mind. I often find myself exhausted by the limitations of the world we live in, so I imagined a world in which the creative mind was not bound by such mundane things. On the following page you will find a little story that I wrote to go with the fabric col- lection followed by pages of prints and projects. I am so proud to offer this and the many other new products designed ex- clusively for the independent fabric and quilt shops that I love so much!

I have been a part of this industry since long before I put my name on cloth and called myself a fabric designer. I am first and foremost an enthusiast. I love quilting and I love fabric and my intention is always to deliver the best possible product that I am able. My hope is that you see that passion in these pages in the form of fabrics certainly but also in woven rib- bons, thoughtful notions and inspirational books and a brand new machine embroidery collection all carefully crafted to create a complete sewing experience for both the retailer and

the consumer. Enjoy!

With Gratitude..."

BUT

Eventually, It was released as pictured above with the following explanation:

Tula Pink... April 4, 2017

"There has been some serious discussion of my upcoming fabric collection titled "Spirit Animal" and I would like to address it directly. If you have followed me on social media you may have noticed that I do not share a lot about my personal life. Many of you probably don't know if I am married or have kids or how many siblings that I have or even what I do outside of fabric and sewing. This is by design, I am a private person and I open up a curated corner of my life but keep the rest private just for me.I love fabric and I love designing fabric. I design fabric to bring joy and beauty into the world in the best way that I know how. I use my gift of illustration to tell stories about places that I have been, about things that I have seen and more often than not I use this to tell my own personal stories. I have often remarked that if you really want to know me look to my fabric. This collection is no different.This brings me to the main point that I would like to address. I have read the comments and given myself some time to work through my emotions so that I could respond with clarity. I have explored my maternal ancestry in past collections and in "Spirit Animal" I chose to pay homage to my paternal ancestry. I am proud of my father's heritage and am grateful for the richness of culture that he passed onto me. I wanted to honor that crucial part of myself in the same way that I had in previous collections. I am saddened that I have to defend this here and in this way. I bare my soul on cloth and offer it up to the public season after season. This is a scary thing to do but this community has always made me feel comfortable in doing so and the truer I am to myself the more people have championed my work. I do understand the concern and take it extremely seriously. I do not wish to spend the next year defending my family tree. I have no desire to make people uncomfortable, this has never been the object of my work. For this reason I have asked FreeSpirit to pull the main print from this collection. I have chosen not to replace this print but to let it stand as is with a piece of it's heart missing. I respect anyone's decision not to purchase this collection as that it always your prerogative. I only hope that you can see this for what it is, not as a controversy but as a celebration of creativity, nature and the will to manifest your own destiny through boundless imagination."

Anyways... I consider myself all caught up on the background and tensions that surrounded this stunning fabric release and was thrilled when my sister gifted me this small piece of fabric that I knew- just had to be a center of a large rosette!
I had already created an outer ring... now I had to make a decision on the inner...

I've collected so much from this release that it was hard to decide what to use initially...

Eventually, I focused the center on the purples...And surrounded the chief with Lunar glow "Bear Hug"

I added "Otter and Chill" diamonds for 3rd round...

Fourth ring created with Re-tweet Aurora

Initially I had planned on rounding it out like this...

But then I changed my mind and decided I love the fabrics in this series so much and had nearly the whole collection! So I decided to make it my third large ring. AND to go BOLD!

"Sunkissed Bear Hug"

I still haven't made up my mind which fabrics or design to go with for next 3 rings... but I still have quite a bit of sewing to complete on this one, so I will worry about it later...

August 1, 2022

I completed my Spirit block on 7/13!!!

Just noticed I never shared...