Hello...I'm Stephanie of Loft Creations.  I was tickled when Connecting Threads asked me to guest post. 

This is my Modern Mary Jane pattern.  Retro fun! This is a great pattern for highlighting a large print fabric for the center panel.  When I design a new bag, I like to try out different fabrics in hopes that I can appeal to a wide audience, and to show the versatility of one single pattern.

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Yay! What better way to start the week than with a thread giveaway?!?  I’d love to be able to enter but since I work here, they say I’m not allowed. Thus, unable to enter, I console myself with the thought that I get to be a part of the excitement and make some other quilter’s day!

One lucky grand prize winner will get a thread set of their choosing and two others will get 2 spools of thread in any color combination they want. I may be biased, but I personally love our thread and am so happy to have 33 new colors, giving us a new grand total of 90 colors in our cotton Essential Thread spools that we will have day in and day out.

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Hi..I'm Kiera and I blog over at It's Sew Kiki.  The Connecting Threads team was kind enough to ask me to write about my Follow the Leader quilt and their beautiful Tulane fabric.

I'd had this quilt idea in my head and sketched out for a while.  I just didn't have the right fabric for it.  I knew I wanted something bright and when I saw the Tulane line I knew it would be perfect. This fabric is just so rich and saturated with color.  It's just beautifully vibrant and was perfect to pair with the black solid.

I especially liked the reds and the blues and used a lot of those in my quilt.  I backed this with Quilter's Candy Solid in Teal and I couldn't be happier with the results. I'm really proud of this quilt.  It's my first original quilt design...start to finish from sketch pad to sewing table. You can't believe the fun I had sorting through the Tulane Fat Quarters and making this quilt pop! Next up, I think I need a pillow to match the quilt!

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to be making a swaddle blanket for a friend expecting her second baby this coming March. Well, over the weekend I attempted this project. I say attempted because it was much more of a challenge than I had anticipated.

The pattern that I used was from the Fabric-by-Fabric One Yard Wonders book. After looking it over briefly, I decided that it seemed simple enough. Cut out the fabric, sew the swaddle ties together with a French seam, and sew the bias tape on. I knew the bias tape would be tricky, but was not expecting it to be this painful! The instructions called for ¼” bias tape. I have never used bias tape before, and since I am still perfecting the art of sewing in a straight line, I might have been better off with a thicker bias tape. I found it really tricky not only to sew it onto the fabric, but even pinning it on and trying to keep the fabric tucked within the tape was a challenge. Every time I came to a rounded corner the bias tape would sort of flip the fabric down. This made sewing difficult as it kept wanting to bunch as I tried to straighten it out. I was excited after I got around the first corner because it looked great! And then I realized the fabric wasn’t sewn in all the way.

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Can you say Va Va Voom!?!  I absolutely love this Tulane collection with its bold greens and teals, mixed in with its darker, sophisticated blues and maroons. The prints in this collection remind us of taking an evening stroll down Bourbon Street -- they're just so elegant and romantic. 

Not only does this collection look amazing in quilts, it's also a fantastic choice for curtains, throw pillows, kitchen accessories, and more.  The fabric works so beautifully with solids, adding just the right amount of flair to a pattern. 

One of the kits that I love most in this collection is called Two Block Hop and it does an amazing job of blending the neutral fabrics with the bold and exciting prints in Tulane.

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