Introducing Doughnuts!

Have you heard the latest news? Check out this press release I got from Moda.

Do you love Jelly Rolls, Layer Cakes, Honey Buns, Dessert Rolls, and Jelly Cakes? Then you’ll love Moda's newest precut confection: Doughnuts!

Why buy yardage and spend time cutting holes in it when Moda can do the work for you? Doughnuts come in assorted shapes and sizes, each with a precut hole in the center. Some have a sugary glaze of fusible webbing, often sprinkled with scraps of release paper—perfect for your next yummy project! (Especially if you want your project needs to look like Swiss cheese.)

Pick up a box of Doughnuts today for a delicious new quilting experience. Available from your favorite fabric retailer.

What will those bakers at Moda cook up next? Chocolate chip cookies? Twinkies? Fruitcake? Soufflé? Dump cake? S’mores? All-you-can-eat dessert buffet? (If dessert = fabric, count me in for that one!)

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, happy April 1! (With apologies to Moda.)

Plush birds to go with Bird Crossing quilt

To go along with my Bird Crossing/Birds of a Feather quilt in American Patchwork & Quilting, I wrote up a pattern for these stuffed birds that's in the current (Spring ’09) issue of Quilts & More. Youngest Brother turned the bird blocks from the quilt into the three-dimensional versions and stitched ’em up—check out his blog Campus Crafts to find out what he’s been up to since.

I’ve also set up a Flickr group for projects made from my patterns—if you’ve made the quilt or stuffed birds, please upload it! I’d love to see what you guys do.

And in the same vein, there’s a proper Feed Dog Designs website in the works (another excuse for why I’ve been a slack poster). If you go to the URL now, it pretty much just forwards you here to the blog, which will become part of the new site. But I'll also be adding patterns, tools, and all sorts of stuff in the next few weeks (touch virtual wood). I’ll keep you posted!

Life as Felis Domesticus knows it is over

Thanks for all the comments on my Bird Crossing quilt! I'm so glad people are excited about it. I'm really sorry I haven't had a chance to reply personally to more of your comments—we've a new addition to the family, so it's been quite busy of late!

The Mother and Father are moving to China, so we've taken in their adorable pooch Mazie. Poor Felis Domesticus didn't know what hit her, but though she looks entirely demonic in the photo, the two critters have made their peace with each other and are on their way to becoming best of friends. Maybe.

Check out the new APQ!

I'm so excited to announce that a pattern for one of my quilt designs is in the April issue of American Patchwork & Quilting! Credit for making and beautifully quilting the quilt (and buying the fabrics!) goes to the one-and-only Mother, who's been alerted by her LQS that issues are coming in now.

I called the quilt Bird Crossing, but it's Birds of a Feather in the mag. Somehow my first quilt pattern slipped into the “expert tips” issue, which has me giving advice alongside the more experienced likes of Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle, Joanna Figueroa, and Amy Butler, and I'm even included in the “Tips from Quilt Designers and Teachers” feature on the APQ website. Not bad, eh? Perhaps I should have the Mother make all my quilts! Alas, it'd be tricky from the provinces of China (more on that later).

There'll also be a pattern for a matching stuffed bird made by Youngest Brother in the next Quilts & More—and it's even on the cover (I'll totally be making that cake pincushion)! Thanks Mom and Bro for lending your talents to these projects.

I have a few more projects in the publishing pipeline too (ones that didn't involve [as much] pimping my family out), so watch this space.

Update: Even if you missed the magazine while it was on newsstands, it’s not too late to get the pattern! Download it (with a new pillow pattern) from my website.

My favourite fabric of 2008

Kim at True Up invited me to pick my Best of 2008 fabrics—you can go see my choices there now, then see what other bloggers gave the thumbs-up to! She also gives inside scoops on where fabric is going in 2009.