HE LOVES IT, HE LOVES IT NOT

I don't know about your husband, but mine is a really hard person to please.  Project after project gets completed and he says "That's Nice."  Sometimes it is worse than that.  When I show him pictures of new designs, he gives his opionions, or in other words, tells me how to make changes and why I should.  I DON'T LISTEN VERY OFTEN.  I do have to say though, that the inspirations for "A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND", the diamond ring shape was his idea.

Back to the point at hand.  We just finished sewing a new Ellie Bag.  We used Free Spirit Fabrics.  We love artsy designs.  It is also in some of our favorite colors, orange and brown.  Now, my husband hates the color orange.   So, I showed him the bag in progress and to my surprise, he said "Wow, I really like it."  I am still in shock.  He then added, "I don't like the orange polka dot fabric though, but the rest of it is nice."  He went on to put in his two cents on which fabrics I should use for the handles.  I didn't listen.  After all, the orange polka dot was my favorite of the fabrics.  So, I will let ya'll issue your own opinion. 

Here are a couple of close-ups.  Notice that the ties and handles are two different fabrics.

Here is a shot of the different stripes of fabric that make the bag.  The combinations of fabrics are endless.

Check out the cute inside fabric.

And don't forget the little glass case made out of the adorable orange polka dot.

As the title states, "He loves it, He loves it not."  Where my husband loves it not most of the time, Janice's husband, Kevin, loves it all.  He even helps in quilt design, usually fishing or hunting themes.  Janice's husband does provide a great service for Abbey Lane Quilts.  He empties Janice's Abbey Bags.  He is constantly checking to make sure all three of Janice's Abbey Bags have the scraps and strings emptied to the garbage.  I am constantly trying to get him to offer this service to the general public, but no luck so far.  I hear Bribery might work.  Please send all reasonable offers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Janice and Marcea

WE LOVE FINISHED PROJECTS

We finished the new purse today, handles and all.  We absolutely love this bag.

 It is a perfect size and has a great shape. 

























The inside has two pockets, big enough for all my lip glosses and my pda.  It has a button closure to hold everything safe. 

Now, the fun part, a name.  As far as bags go, we are up to the letter "F".  We have been searching for a good name.  Janice's daughter-in-law, Nicole, was the one who gave us the idea for the bag,  she would like the name to be "Nicolette."  I have taken a liking to "MAGGIE MAY."  We are open for suggestions, however, you know our theme, Beatle Manie.  So let us know. 

Oh yeah, the only bad news, the pattern will not be ready until Quilt Market, the middle of October.  We will have several more fabric versions, though, between now and then.

The good news, "PAPER BACK WRITER" is now available.

We used a fabric collection from Moda, "AUTHENTIC", which is shipping hopefully this week into your local store.  The quilt uses 20 fat quarters and some yardage.  The pattern is for sale on our website, http://www.abbeylanequilts.com/.

That is it for today.  We are waiting for fabric from Moda for two more new quilts for Market.  We have a couple of other surprises in store.

Have a great week, and we would love help on the name for the new bag.

Janice and Marcea

THE FUN IS JUST STARTING

I have a very large collection of purses and bags.  I have spent quite a few years collected.  My mother had a huge collection also.  The thing I have learned about purses is while there are endless beautiful bags, the bag I like is not necessarily the bag you might like.  That's what is so great about a cloth bag that you make.  We all get to personlize a great design by chosing fabrics we love.  The newest bag, yet to be named, is like that.  I LOVE the fabrics I used.  It is also designed to make with leftover scraps or your favorites or those cute little Honey Buns from Moda.  Add a little yardage and you have a purse you will love.  Even though it is not done yet,  I had to show you some sneak peaks.  Since I took the pictures, I have added a binding, and tomorrow I will add the handles.  It is a great design.  Not to big, but still has plenty of room.  There will be two pockets on the inside.  How could you even think of having a bag without pockets.

Here are all the pieces ready to be put together.

Here is one of the front panel.  The striped pieces are made from little 1 1/2" strips sewn together. 

This beautiful piece is the inside of the bag.  You can't go wrong with a polka dot pocket.

Here it is.  I just love it.  The binding will be that cute brown polka dot.  There are also a couple of other surprises.

Here is the side view.  Love the piecing.  Ok that is all the pictures for now.  Having so much fun with this bag, forgot to tell you the other news. 

We finished another design today for RJR Fabrics.  The fabric isn't even coming out until late next spring.  It is scheduled for a magazine next summer.  No sneak peaks on this project.

More news, Janice finished quilting Paper Back Writer and the pattern is written.  All that is left is the cover shot and it will ready next Monday.

Photos of the finished purse and Paper Back Writer coming this weekend.

Thanks for checking in and have a great holiday.

Janice and Marcea

BUSY TIMES ARE COMING

So much for blogging once a week, but we have been busy.  I know, you have heard that before.  Janice flew to Utah two weeks ago.  Her son and daughter-in-law graduated from college and the next day her daughter Nellie, our trusty helper, had her open house.  Janice stayed a couple of extra days so we could finish sewing the new quilt from Moda's Authentic collection.  It is being quilted as I write.  We love this quilt.  Here are some sneak peaks of the almost done quilt.

A lot of the fun in doing a quilt is naming the quilt.  We usually have three or four names to choose from and once in a while we let you help us guess.  The name for this quilt came easy, in fact, we thought the name was perfect.  So, here we go, our newest quilt will be called:

"PAPER BACK WRITER"

The fabric arrives in stores in September and so will the pattern.  We should have it on the website early next week.

So you can have some things to look forward to, starting tomorrow, we will be creating the illusive computer bag.  While brainstorming for that, we found a design for Laura Gunn's (Michael Miller fabric) new line Lantern Bloom.  We love this fabric and it inspired us with a great new purse.  Previews coming soon.

We are also working on new quilts with three Moda Designers, Lila Tueller, Sanae, and Momo.  Sometimes we feel so lucky to see all the great fabrics early.  We also took a peak at Sandy Henderson's new line, (Michael Miller), and it is BEAUTIFUL.  We are going to use it in our first ever, official bed spread.  Can't wait.  So much to do, so little time.

I took a break this week and we met some friends who flew into Las Vegas.  We drove up through Southern Utah and went to Zion, Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell.  We did hiking, off roading (had a tire blow out), boating and all kinds of fun things.  The good news, I took 300 pictures before my camera broke.  That is the bad news.  I wanted to share a couple of pictures with ya'll.  The scenery was breathtaking.  Our first stop was Zion's National Park.

I couldn't resist taking pictures of all the beautiful sunflowers.  I caught someone else who was also checking out the flowers.

Our next stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. 

All those little spikey things are called WHO DOO'S.  Along the drive we saw tons of them.  Here in fact is a whole family.

We put the boat in at Lake Powell and headed down to Rainbow Bridge.  You can see it peaking around the corner in this picture.  It was about a 100 mile round trip.

Lake Powell is surrounded entirely by Red Rock.  The scenery is constantly changing up and down the lake.  Here is one more picture. 

Hope you enjoyed the vacation photos.  I just had to share.

Have a great week.  Can't wait to share with you all the upcoming projects.

Janice and Marcea

WHAT HAPPENED TO SUMMER

The middle of August, kids are back in school, the sun sets earlier and the snow is coming. Ok, not in Florida, but in another month the temperature will drop below 72 degrees. The end of summer also means quilt market is right around the corner, and we are getting ready. So here is our update.

First, thanks to all the help on the blog. I am slowly getting it fixed up. I even got a counter to know how many people stop by and I was shocked. There were a lot more than I would have guessed. In the past, we only posted when we had finished products, but it looks like we will let you know more about the "PATTERN BUSINESS" and any new updates on fabric, projects, ect.

First, we have been trying to do a COMPUTER BAG pattern. The first problem is, I want to use the bag and so it has to have certain requirements. I travel on airplanes a lot and my computer goes everywhere I do. Not only do I need it to look good it has to be functional. That means great padding, sturdy handles, places for the cords and cd's and all that other stuff. So, night after night I put myself to sleep designing. Finally, I think I have it. So this week, using some great Amy Butler home dec weights. It doesn't hurt to match the fabric up with our cute green apple computers. So this is Project #2 on this week's list.

Project #3. We are redoing one of our favorite patterns, ALL TOGETHER NOW. We debating whether to do it in Batiks, a Florida favorite, or Kaffe Fassett fabrics, everybody's favorite. Kaffe won and look at the selection. It will be beautiful. It is fun and easy to make also.

Project #1 for the week. The one we are looking forward to the most. One of our favorite new fabric lines at Market was from Moda. It is called Authentic and will be in stores by September. Some shops are already carrying the small cuts of this line. It is great, sophisticated, interesting and of course, green, black, white and cream. Can't beat that color combination.

We will be using it for two projects, a quilt and a project bag. This week it is the quilt. To design a quilt, we start in our heads, then paper, then the computer. This is a couple of the computer designs for Authentic. (The fun quilt name comes last). You should see the finished top by the end of the week, and you can compare the drawings to the real thing. Sometimes changes get made as the sewing takes place.

So, we started with what happened to summer. The temperature in Northern Utah yesterday dropped to 49 degrees. Those are January temperatures in Florida. As you know, Nellie, Janice's daughter, and our trusty volunteer employee was married on July 31. I headed to Florida and Janice is heading to Utah this week. I am still waiting for the wedding photos to post a couple, but the picture I can show you is a Florida Native. Everyone went out on the boats to hunt for alligators. We found two. Yes, alligators. We were about 20 feet from this one.

Get those projects out and start sewing. We are. Have a great week.

Janice and Marcea

HELP!!!!

Attention all bloggers. We need HELP. While I seem to able to do lots of things on the website, this blog has me totally confused. So, we are looking for help with the following:

1. putting a background on, so we don't have all that white.

2. putting a counter on so we know how many people come and visit.

3. adding whatever it takes to have all you readers subscribe to our site (if we ever get this figured out, we can have contests and giveaways.

I think that is it for a start. So, if you are a serious blogger (lots of know how) please email us at info@abbeylanequilts.com or leave us a comment.

FREE PATTERNS WILL BE FLOWING TO ANYONE WHO CAN HELP.

p.s. just thought i would show you a picture from my recent trip to the TURKS and CACOIS islands. when posting blogs frustrates me, i relax by looking at this picture.

IT'S ABOUT TIME

Wow, I just realized it has been almost two months since we posted a note. All I can say is, "It's About Time!

We have been busy beyond belief. We were very ambitious for market with lots of new patterns. The patterns are all written and up on the website, http://www.abbeylanequilts.com/.

Here are a couple of our holiday favorites that you can make now.

This is WOO HOO WITCHY. Grab your favorite halloween fabrics and whip it up. The pattern includes a bonus HAT PILLOW pattern.











This is STEP INTO CHRISTMAS. Use a jelly roll or scraps you have in your stash and combine it with some yardage. The big trees have three dimensional peppermint candies for a finishing touch.

Summer is in full swing and so are we. Two new designs. Here come the sneak peaks. RJR FABRICS brought us a beautiful new line that will be out this fall.

It has rich jewel colors and a little twist on traditional design. The line is called ENCHANTED ROSE. The pattern is called REMEMBER WHEN.

RJR FABRICS brought us a second line called DOTS AND STRIPES. We did a new bag for this line. It will be a great basic line of fabrics, polka dots in different colors and different sizes and a great stripe in each color wave.

The pattern is called THE ELLIE BAG and it is a great tote. The sample is done in the RJR Fabrics and you can't help but smile when you see it. Two long straps and a draw string add to the fun.

Ladies who have seen it, love it. It makes a great beach bag, overnight bag, or a big fun purse.

Another bonus also, a little cell phone or ipod carrier. For those of you like me, it makes a great reading glasses case also.

I am going to make it this week in some funky, modern Valerie Wells fabric. It will be perfect for that college student or the 25 to whatever age crowd who want to make a statement.

Both of these patterns will be available soon.

That is it for today. Ya'll have a great day.

Janice and Marcea