Magic Slippers!!!

THEY CAME!!!  Ya gotta just check out my "magic slippers"!  Seriously, I think these have special powers.  If my daughter had a pair, she mentioned that she could definitely run faster.  I'm not sure about that, at least, I don't think I'll be testing THAT theory unless I'm late for my flight to Houston!  I know they're good for dancin', 'cuz I'm doin' the happy dance in them right NOW!  Because they are simply...

FABULOUS!!!

Well???  What do you think?  Does that print look familiar?

(Hint, hint....check out the header on our blog...)

YES!!!  It's one and the same.  And now that you've NOTICED it, let me tell you a secret.  Shhhhhhhh....that's a little sneak peek of our NEW FABRIC LINE coming out in Spring!  Oh yeah!  I'll be wearing these little puppies all over Houston to promote our next line with Henry Glass.  We're callin' the line Hip Happy...'cuz, well....it just makes us HAPPY!  Hence, the dancing....

Here's another thing that makes me happy....if you're a fan of ours on facebook you may have seen me post this little pic...

(and if you're NOT one of fans...get with the program!  "Like" us woulda???)

This is a little happy quilt I whipped up recently.  I feel like I need to be doing SOMETHING, and since I can't be sewing with our OWN fabric (which is in the state of AZ) I took out this little kit I bought from Gina Halladay at her shop Fresh Picked Fabrics in Yorba Linda, CA.

Gina has FANTATIC kits, btw, if you're looking for something fun, ya gotta GO to her shop!

Anyway, this is called Tile Play and it's one of Gina's patterns.  However, I had to, what we like to term, 

"Lizzie B-it".

The pattern is stunning on it's own, because of those beautiful bright poppies on the border.  But it looked like an empty canvas to me...which I just had to "paint"!  

So I added my own poppy raw-edged appliques to the "canvas".  I took my freezer paper and traced around the poppies on the fabric print, because I wanted to make them look the same.  

And I just HAPPENED to find the perfect fabric in my stash to make my poppies, using green gros-grain ribbon for the stems.  Don't you just LOVE your STASH??

You may ask why I love poppies.....well.....first, they're scattered all over my house!

This poppy painting hangs above my bed.  I LOVE that it's bright and bold.

And this....

I painted myself!  It's a watercolor, that I painted as I sat in the poppy fields in France.

And THAT is where my love of these little red beauties began.

In France, in early summer, the countryside would be dotted with red poppies.  It was GORGEOUS! They grew off the sides of roads, in fields with grain....and the grain was green as it was early summer, setting off the red delicate petals of the poppy.

Can you picture it?

Here's a pic of a poppy field in France, just in case...

Sighhhhhhhh!  Oh how I miss the beauty of France!

You can see how 10 years of living in that GORGEOUS country inspires a lot of my art and quilting.

Poppies.  Don't they just make YOU happy?

And you know what ELSE makes me HAPPY?

Beth texted me this photo yesterday afternoon....LIZZIE B LOADED IN THE TRUCK!

YAYYYYYY!

You can BET we were both doing the HAPPY DANCE together.

Now before I go....and dance some more....in my fabulous shoes.....I wanted to make sure that you all listened to Pat Sloan's Creative Talk Radio yesterday.  Did you get the chance?  That's ok, because I've just linked it to her podcast in iTunes where you can download ALL her shows and give a listen (hey, you can even hear her chat with the Lizzie B's!).   I won't give away the whole show, so you can have a listen too, but I DID find out some neat things about blogger Amy Ellis of Amy's Creative Side. 

I thought Amy was just another quilter that I connected to through LOTS of quilters on Twitter.  But she has an AMAZING blog.  AND....there's a VERY cool thing she started a few years ago....

a Blogger Quilt Festival! 

Check it out!  Hear her talk about it with Pat Sloan and why she started it.

If you have a blog, you may want to participate!

I WILL BE!  So watch for our post sometime next week.  Can't wait to read about lots of other quilters and hear their stories!  Thanks Amy!