Hey hey StitchyMites!
I hope you all enjoyed your first week as a member :) Tell your friends! The more SMites the merrier. We had a few little hiccups to start, there are a lot of moving parts to this subscription and Damo is just getting a handle on how it all works. We’ve managed to add the comment section though, so I’m looking forward to hearing from you all!
Very soon you will be able to just go to www.sarahfielke.com, and you’ll find StitchyMites, your BOM subscriptions, the shop - absolutely everything in the one place, instead of having to go to different places for different things. We are even finally building a wholesale and class information section, which won’t mean much to most of you but is a HUGE step forward for me. Hooray!
Well it’s been a week and a half around here that’s for sure. There’s so much going on in my world at the moment… StitchyMites, the Tiny Town Sew Along, finishing up The Secret Garden program for 2023. I’m also getting ready to launch both of my Block of the Month programs for 2023, so I thought I would give you a tiny scoop into what that might be - you have to promise me that you put it in the StitchyMites vault! Shhhh its a secret :)
While I can’t show you the quilt designs quite yet (soon!!), I can tell you that opening for subscription on October 15 will be the FIRST of the BOMs. I’m working with a great friend of mine, Robyn from The Strawberry Thief! Robyn is the Liberty distributor in Australia, and she is going to make KITS for the quilt I’ve designed especially for her, which is so so exciting! The pattern is inspired by a famous Liberty design and by a William Morris contemporary, Owen Jones. It features applique, EPP and some art deco design touches.
As usual nothing is compulsory except for the pattern subscription though - you can make the quilt with or without the kit. I get so many queries about kits each year that it’s lovely to be able to say YES this time. This program will open with the first pattern dropping on January 15 (a little earlier than usual to accomodate what’s coming later in the year!) and it will run for six months. Owing to that, its a slightly smaller and simpler design and its just gorgeous… I am loving stitching it so much.
The second program I will be able to tell you about it live from Quilt Market in Houston at the end of October! Until then I am sworn to secrecy, but I’ll let slip that one of my best friends and I have been plotting for literally YEARS about how to work together and it’s finally come to fruition. This second BOM program will open for subscriptions on April 1 and the first pattern will drop on August 1. It will run for 12 months, and will also have beautiful fabric kits, yippee!
With that little bit of info leaked, this week for Spooky Town we are going to start sewing the houses onto the background rows.
Make sure and take note if you are making both quilts, that the Spooky Town rows are cut at 3 1/2” wide instead of the 4 1/2” for Tiny Town, so that we end up with the smaller, wallhanging size quilt.
Also I didn’t mention in the video last week that the Spooky Town houses have the 1/4” seam of fabric off the bottom of them, instead of for Tiny Town where they are cut off level with the papers. If you’ve done either of the quilts the wrong way around though don’t worry, everything will still fit perfectly, look cute and be no issue, its just a tiny tweak.
The Tiny Town post on the free blog this week talks about how to lay your rows out and start stitching them - however here’s a little extra video for the StitchyMites that demos it all out for you, and talks about positioning and glueing the houses, and working and hiding the applique stitches in case you haven’t done that before. The tools I show here are what I use for my method of needleturn appliqué - I bang on about them all the time in my BOM programs, so I thought I wouldn’t do that again here, but if you’re new to the process please ask below and I’ll be happy to fill you in!
Don’t forget to use your discount code to sign up for the Christmas Swap, and that the Spooky Town pattern is a free download for StitchyMites members.
Happy stitching peeps, and I’ll see you next Wednesday.
Sarah