Wednesday 22 October 2008

Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags - coming soon!


The blad (the publisher's promo booklet) for my new patchwork bag book, "Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags", arrived today, so you can see the cover for the first time. It feels good to see it at this stage. I've been working on the second pages editing last week, which is the second time the author gets to see the design layouts and the last stage before the colour proofs - by which point, you hope nothing has to be changed!

This book has been fun - it has also been very hard work, as this time I've made no less than 28 bags! There are 14 bag patterns, presented as a large and small pair for each day of the week, and the book is themed around using up fat quarters. Since quilt shops make up very tempting fat quarter bundles, a bag or two is a great way to play around and have fun with fabrics I like but might not want to use for a quilt - in theory, but I did end up with a quilt's worth of some of those I really liked (such as the Lakehouse fabrics used for the Typo Satchel - you'll have to wait to see that).

The bag on the cover is the Quilter's Suitcase, designed to hold your stash of other fat quarters standing up, so you can take them to classes etc. The main colourway uses fabrics from Euro Japan Links "cottons with a touch of gold" range, with plain red and green - I suspect their website can't keep up with the whole range of gold prints in stock, as they have so many to choose from (you can catch up with Euro Japan Links at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate in November). The alternative version started out with a bundle of four fabrics in an olive/dark green/lilac palette from Antique Angel, with another three added from Dot Sherlock's Quilter's Needs, our local travelling quilt shop based on the Wirral - Dot had a super white on green polka dot that I just had to find an excuse to use and a lovely vintage travel themed print that introduced a touch of yellow ochre to jazz up the colour scheme. I don't know which version I like best, but I'm looking foward to getting all the bags back from my publishers so I can start using them.

I'm hoping to have some free cover art postcards to give away at Malvern next week, so please see me on my demo stand at the Autumn Quilt Festival at the Three Counties Showground if you are visiting the show. The book will be published next April (2009), by David & Charles, who also publish my other bag books.

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