Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve is a great time for reflection, and we thank you SEW much for stitching a long with us this year. It is a tremendous privilege to connect with the worldwide community of sewing, full  of people who live their lives trying to make something beautiful, frequently to gift it away!

And so, we reach across the world to hug each and every one of you with these few pictures to warm you and make you smile-- 

a little look at what happened between thread changes this holiday season at San Francisco Stitch Co.!

Our tree, pulled from the backyard, because we were so late in getting one, every one was sold out... isn't it glorious!

Stockings for all the elves at our son's auto shop... having a machine embroiderer in the family sure has it's privileges at this time of year, wouldn't you agree!!

A shortbread house, 

because we're Scottish and no one here likes gingerbread!

  

Snowflake cookies made by an extremely talented daughter. 

If you think sending one to art school won't pay off... think again!

A new rescue grandpuppy...

and a very tired grandpuppy at that!

A trip to see the tree in Boston, where my phone got SO COLD it could only take one picture...

Lots and lots of eating out-- 

because there is even less time to make dinner than usual...

  

Perler bead ornaments-- because at heart-- 

we're all about the crafts here.

Here's wishing you had the
most magical Christmas season ever,
and to a bright New Year-- 2019!

Carol and the San Fran Stitch gang

xox

Cloud Club Ready for Take-Off!

It is so hard to believe another year is ending, 

and we are so happy to have a set of thirteen birds to show for it!

It is with great pride that we look over the past year and see how we went from this, 

to this,

to this! 

That is quite a flock and we know from your emails that quite a few of you kept up and have this same stack as we do!

We briefly enjoy the sensation of being "finished"--

however, we are quick to remember that there is some fill in to do-- and some finishing instructions!! Yes-- the joy of the "on point" setting-- we have some triangle fillers to design!

We have put A LOT of thinking and sketching into it... and it was very difficult to find something perfectly stunning for these birds. 

We started with the idea of quilted "feathers" ... what else for a bird quilt, right? We quickly moved on from stuffy old feather sketches and started moving into REAL feathers. After months of thought and sketching, this is what we have finally decided on:

We are pretty excited and hope you love it as much as we do! We've already started to digitize it-- we're not sure if the feathers will be full color embroidery or maybe just a quilting design. 

Thanks to Photoshop, we've been able to do a little "imagining" of what a truly finished piece might look like.

This is an "artist's rendering" of the in-the-hoop birds as they would look stitched together and with setting triangles added.

For a more formal setting,  you could add a fabric border in a color like the one above. Isn't that the perfect finish?!

Some of us will get there, but the beauty of designing just two sizes of these setting triangles is that you can then make a project of as many birds as you wish. Whatever you have finished NOW, is perfectly fine! (More on that later!)

  One... 

Three... etc. etc.

Then there is the Quilt-As-You-Go version, which is more like a real quilt, and we have planned a full setting of both the triangles and sashing blocks.

Are you WOWed yet?! Remember, these aren't finished pieces,  and we're still in the early stages of planning... here are some fabric swatches we snipped from Fat Quarter Shop. More grunge so far, and we are leaning toward the purples, but no final decisions have been made. What do YOU think?

It's so exciting for us to finally have a chance to render up what a finished Cloud Club quilt might be... and we can't thank you enough for all of the LOVE you've shown for our bird series. There are so many more birds we'd like to draw in thread! So....

We're making a committment to do five more during the course of next year which would extend the layout as follows:

Or...with twelve more you could do this... but we have to admit, another bird every month next year seems a bit daunting! Let's see what happens...

So that's where we are... expect the setting triangles and sewing instructions for both methods early next year.. then it's up to you to finish or to keep on! We are so grateful for the large following we had this past year, and hope you'll be able to turn your bird blocks of any number from UFOs into a finished project that really takes wing!! We'd love to hear your comments on all of this below.

xox

Carol