Heather Ross - Briar Rose Debut & Giveaway

During QuiltCon I was lucky enough to get to see Heather Ross's new line - Briar Rose. She let us touch and feel lots of the wonderful fabric during her tutorial. The line debuted on April 8th on her website and will ship from Windham Fabrics in July.  There is a special free quilt design for the collection and it is beautiful and features all the bright colors of the line. If you have seen the cool Washi dress (I saw tons of folks wearing it at Houston Quilt Fest and QuiltCon) then you know the work of Made by Rae who created the Briar Rose quilt pictured above!

Briar Rose Lilac

Briar Rose Meadow

Briar Rose Pink

So now for the giveaway!  I know you just can't wait for July for the fabric.  Leave me a comment saying what you want to make out of a charm pack of this new springy line and it will be hopping its way out to you.  2 winners and the deadline for entry - April 18th.  Thanks Heather!!! 

Giveaway Winner ~ Anna Maria Horner

The winner of the Anna Maria Horner Field Study Bundle is Fiodhna!

Congratulations Fi! 

Thank you to everyone who replied. I truly valued hearing how each of you have found Anna Maria inspirational. She truly is a lovely person! 

Giveaway Winners - Heather Ross

We have our winners!  What a great way to start the week back from my spring break in Sanibel Island -- giving away two beautiful prizes from the lovely Heather Ross.  We had some snags on my return trip last night with awful traffic so I let my husband be my random number generator.  He is very random, so that worked out great.  I was showing him the article on the ipad while stuck outside of Baton Rouge and he knew all about the Dome home and asked if it was a Bucky original.  He surprises me still after 15 years all the random things he knows.  On to the winners!!

Liz from Fat Chick Quilts and the HMQG and
Emily from Phone Home Designs by E.T. and the Austin Modern Guild! 

Martha Stewart also agrees with us on the subject of Heather Ross.  Here is a delightful review of her new Prints book and some inspired projects! 

Watch out for our next giveaway!!

HMQG Giveaway - Heather Ross

Sandwiching Heather

One of the reasons I went to QuiltCon was to attend lectures.  I really wanted to hear more from my favorite designers.  I love knowing what motivates them and how they fuel their creative process. I spoke with and begged swag from a few of my favorite designers, quilters and other general modern movement gurus that were at QuiltCon and am happy to announce the HMQG After QuiltCon Giveaway!  Heather Ross will be the first inspiration for this new series because she has offered signed & doodled copies of both of her books for us!  We will be giving away one copy each of Weekend Sewing and her new book Prints.  (this one was sold out at QuiltCon before she even got to her Stitch Lab book signing so I can't wait to see it - here are cute candid shots of Heather graciously running out of books )

I really like Heather Ross's sweet & quirky designs so her lecture entitled "My Fabric Design Process,  From Inspiration to Finished Photoshop Files" appealed to me.  I am familiar with Photoshop and thought this was going to be a technical talk.  Heather surprised me when she began her lecture at QuiltCon with an essay about her background and naturalist point of view.  She had an extraordinary childhood roaming around the backwoods of Vermont.  Ross shared themes of families, sense of place and her love of nature.  Then she intertwined these elements into her design process and demonstrated them with samples from her work in Photoshop. She also debuted her new line Briar Rose which will be released April 1st.

The Dome

When she was very young, her parents built a geodome on the top of a mountain where the family lived until deeming the structure a failure.  "The Dome" as it was called was only their home for about a year but it defined her as well as gave her a sense of security and ownership. It was their Dome.  She isn't sure if there was a small fire, structural failure or if they just gave up - but they moved out of the geodome knowing they had tried something special and were brave because of that.  Years later when she went back to the site she was only able to find a monstrous double sink that was too heavy to drag away.  Later, in cool twist she ended up asking the man who bought the old homestead if she could come back and get the sink because she couldn’t forget about it.  She wanted to build her kitchen around it. 

She discussed her time with her extended family.  Her immediate family lived close by her other relatives but they seemed a tiny bit ostracized perhaps because of their geodome.  She described how the other kids had moms in shiny station wagons and dads with well-paying jobs; revealing how she felt a bit different from her cousins.  She came from The Dome – land of unplanned kittens and head lice instead of ballet lessons and excellent public schools.  But she was also clear that it was okay to be different.  Maybe even great.  Maybe even brave!  I grew up with a family that was also a little off and I have grown to embrace those differences so I completely relate to her point of view.

New Home

Heather loves making tents in her bean plants and she talked about different homes and how their sense of place creates security.  The different homes she talked about were very interesting.  There was a neighbor when she was growing up squatting in a tin & plastic shanty and she mentions how his home was built to withstand the elements perhaps better than her uncles’ stone homes that were slowly eroding   There were also lots of interesting photos of the abandoned Catskill home that she and her husband recently purchased to remodel from the ground up.  This is the house that will get the old-worldly sink.

Owl and Pussycat

Next she spoke about her design process. She showed several slides of her fabric and gave examples of how she sometimes takes several designs that she isn’t happy with and mashes them together to make one good one.  She used several examples of her Owl and Pussycat fabric line showing how it evolved over time and edits.  Heather also explains why she has a fondness for these two fairy tale characters - she really likes that the only basis for their friendship is that they like the same food. This makes sense to her and she realizes her own relationship is based on similar characteristics. 

Unicorn Wallpaper

Heather's new book Prints  comes with a DVD of reproducible artwork for more than 50 of her most popular prints. She provides step-by-step instructions for 20 craft projects using the prints—everything from sea turtle stationery to a shower curtain covered with swirling mermaids.  She showed us this cool unicorn wallpaper idea and has more info about it on her blog.  She often mentioned Spoonflower and encouraged her audience to take our ideas, use her as inspiration and just go for it -- print, sew, wallpaper, whatever. 

We also got a sneak peek at her new fabric line - Briar Rose with Windham Fabrics.  It was full of her usual whimsy, charm and fresh spring colors. Heather has generously offered to donate some of her fabric to us for a Giveaway when Briar Rose ships.  

The lecture was incredibly insightful.  It is rare to hear someone speaking so clearly from their heart.  I left the lecture hall feeling really blessed to have been there and brave, like her!

Please comment here for a chance to win either Weekend Sewing  or Prints.   I will pick a random winner for each book on March 17th.  Make sure to follow our blog because there will be 5 more HMQG giveaways coming up. 

Briar Rose

 

Giveaway Winner - ChristaQuilts Gift Certificate

And the winner of a $20 GC from ChristaQuilts.com  is HMQG member Karri Garza.  Check out our next Giveaway for some great Heather Ross swag!  (need not be a member to win!!)

First HMQG Blog Giveaway!

We are now having our first ever HMQG blog giveaway!  And I can happily tell you it won't be the last!  I have at least 5 more ready to go so stay tuned!! Do gifts from Heather Ross, Anna Maria, Denyse Schmidt, Jacquie Gering & Mary Fons all make you excited???  This is going to be so much fun I can't stand it!

So the first giveaway is really simple. Just make a comment on this page stating your favorite collection from any fabric designer and you will be entered to win a $20 Gift Certificate from ChristaQuilts.  One comment = a chance to win free fabric!  Yipeee!  Christa has also offered all of our guild members and friends a discount code where we can have 5% off all of our orders for life.  Pretty cool - and she always has free shipping!  Use the code B13HMQG and sit back to enjoy the savings forever!

   

Enter by March 6th to win.  I will use a random number generator to pick the winner and you do not need to be a guild member to win.  Good luck!