New Books: Oh yeah

Yummy yummy, new beautiful books. New inspirations.

I've already read about a gazillion reviews of Joelle Hoverson's new book, Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, and I'm sure you all have too. So I won't bore you with another review. I will, however, tell you what immediately made me love this book. In the introduction (can you believe, I read the introduction?!), Joelle says "I trained as a painter, and one of my great passions in life is color. For me, making a quilt or patchwork project is almost always an exploration of color." Okay, so I didn't train as a painter. But I did take a LOT of art classes in high school (and then I got disillusioned in college, but that's another story), and like Joelle, one of my favorite aspects of visual arts was working with color. I think that's why I loved printmaking so much- I wasn't that great at the design aspect, but working with different ink combinations was my way of expressing myself in that medium. And I think I've definitely brought that form of passion into my sewing, my new way of expressing myself creatively.

Anyways, we all know what great patterns are in this book. Here a couple that I want to try first:

I was pleasantly surprised to find so many quilt patterns in this book (not something that I consider "last-minute", but who am I to say, I've never tried it. Do you see where I'm headed with this? Yeah, I'm itching for a quilt...)

The second book I picked up at Crafty Planet on Saturday was the Put Together Book #1 from Hillary over at Wee Wonderfuls (one of my absolute favorite blogs).

Here's the story with this one. Back in July (yeah, I know) I started thinking about Christmas presents for Jared's nephews. I decided that I wanted to sew them both little outfits. Amanda suggested Ottobre, and I immediately fell in love and ordered a back issue (just look at the cutie on the cover of issue# 4/2007). So proud of myself for being so on top of things. Dreaming of finishing these outfits months before Christmas and so excited! Well, it's now almost November, and I still haven't gotten the f*!&#ing issue! Okay, apparently it's been returned to them THREE times. I have not moved or changed my name or anything. I have no idea what the problem is. They say they've put it in the mail again, and I just can't bear to give up hope completely and cancel the order. But I figured that I'd better come up with a back up plan. Albeit a much scaled down plan. So I decided that I would finally try my hand at a softie and figured that Hillary's adorable pattern would be the way to go. I'm thinking the Bear and the Bunny, since I'm just not that into kitties. I might also try out the elephant pattern in Joelle's book, but that one just might have to be for me.

By the by, I'll be posting some more new items in the shop tomorrow, so be sure to check them out. We're getting into holiday mode now...