Woohoo!! What rock star students from my class at Sisters this week. For those who have joined up, this is what the first month with include from Aug 1. For those who haven't joined, don't miss this fun journey with Tula! You can join up here Big Woods Block of the Month Presented by Award-Winning Appliqué Artist & Quilt Designer Sarah Fielke Appliqué Project - great for all skill levels! BOM starts 1st August 2024 and finishes July 2025 Quilt designed and made by Sarah Fielke Finished Size: 70” x 96” (1.78m x 2.44m)  - single bed Monthly sections of the digital pattern and corresponding video instruction with Sarah and Tula provided each month for 12 months No fabric kit required but you can purchase the Big Woods Fabric Pack to make in the same fabrics Sarah made the quilt in featuring Besties, Pint-Sized Prints, True Colors & Solids by Tula Pink. You can find a retailer here The PERFECT project to learn to quilt, learn to applique or enhance your skills! Pay upfront or over12months from date of purchase

Hi Smites It’s 6am in Sisters, Oregon and I’m tapping out to this post before I hop off to teach my Climbing Scrap Mountain class at Quilter’s Affair. If you’ve never been to this beautiful event, I couldn’t recommend it more! This is my eighth - or maybe ninth, we can’t remember? - teaching trip to Sisters. I don’t teach overseas anymore nearly as much as I used to. Covid lockdowns taught me that mostly I really would rather be at home! I love the classes when I arrive at my destinations, but all of the years of travelling internationally on my own, five or six times a year, took it’s toll and I’ve vowed it’s not going to happen like that again. Some people love the constant shifting, but my little Cancerian heart is much happier dug into its own nest, with the dog and the boyfriend. So the International teaching trips will be few and far between going forward. Despite that, there’s one show I wouldn’t miss for anything in the world. For starters, the event was set up and run for many years by the incredible Jean Wells, quilting industry legend, but these days then over most by her amazing daughter, my dear friend Valori Wells. Both are authors and fabric designers and teachers, and their quilt shop The Stitchin’ Post is a bucket list destination for many quilters. Next year is going to be a very special one - the 50th anniversary of Quilters Affair and the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. I’ve taught at a lot of shows over the years, most of the big name ones and a lot of others besides. Quilter’s Affair is another thing entirely, different from all the others. The event is held in Sisters, Oregon, a little town in the Oregon mountains on the way up to the Canadian border. It’s a beautiful little place where even the bank is in a log cabin style building. The whole town gets involved with the show and theres a community spirit around it that is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Quilters Affair is held over 5 days, and comprises around about 30 tutors (this year 27), around 1200 students and a whole lot of fun. It’s held in the Sisters High School and the day classes are supported by fun night time events (this year a Bingo night hosted by Scott Hansen and Guicy Guice, an evening auction celebrating the incredible Freddy Moran, where the tutors have all made self portraits for sale in the Freddy style, and an evening lecture by Guiseppe (Guicy) detailing his month long creative residency in Sisters earlier this year. There’s always something to look forward to! On the Saturday the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show is held. Around 15,000 people flock to the town to see over 1,000 quilts hanging through the streets, on the side of every building. At 7 am, the quilts start to go up on the side of The Stitchin’ Post, hung by the local firefighters who arrive in their truck and go up and down the ladder on the side of the store. Once the shop quilts are hung, the rest of the town starts to be hung and by 8 am all 1,000 quilts are waving in the breeze. There are quilts sent from all over world. It’s not a judged show, so there are no prizes - its more a prize to have your quilt hanging in such an amazing setting. For a day, its like Quilt Disneyland.  There’s all sorts of special exhibitions, some by invited artists and some challenge collections, an exhibition from the Portland Modern Quilt Guild and a section of quilts from all the tutors. It’s quite a thing to see and I look forward to it every year. On top of that I get to room with my bestie every year - and its during the incessant chatter after class each day (you’d think we would be exhausted but we end up talking half the night!) that Tula and I over the years have hatched our Block of the Month plans. She is coming in a little late this year, and arrives this afternoon and I’m looking forward to seeing her! I’m getting a post ready for you with all the news and pics from my classes this week, and a show report too. I did not get a chance before I left home to take photos of the cutting instructions for the block triangles, so rather than try to fudge the details without illustration for you I’m going to wait until I’m back. So next Wednesday will be the class/show report and the week after the blocks and quilt layout etc. I don’t get home until the 16th so the extra week is required I’m afraid! Gives you a bit more time to pay with colouring your stars and see what you like.  This post is a bit lacking in colourful photos, but I didn’t want put up placeholders…. Last year I was the featured artist at the show, and I had the honour of over 40 of my quilts being hung in the forest here at a place called Five Pines. This year Guiseppe is the featured artist! Here are some pics from that exhibition, and next week I will have loads of shots to show you from my classes and from the Saturday show. Have a great week peeps, I know I will. See you on the other side Sarah x

Hi Smites I hope your day is great! I am knee deep in unpacking from our trip, repacking to leave for Sisters on Saturday and packing Big Woods orders. Everything here is about taking things out of suitcases and boxes and then putting them back into other ones.  Our colour exercise this week is the start of next weeks larger one. We are going to start sewing a block, or a few blocks, or even a whole quilt if you get excited. There will be instructions for the blocks etc next week, and some colour layout ideas the week after, and then we are done with out colour explorations for time being. I hope you’ve all enjoyed them…. anyone got anything burning away in their minds that you’d like from StitchyMites next, or down the line? Door is always open for you peeps! Last week I asked you to find some photos that you think would make a good quilt palette. n answer to a question I got about doing this exercise, there are no copyright issues with using a photo in this way because we aren’t going to actually make a quilt depicting the photograph. All we are doing is using the photo as a colour reference to spark an idea. If you do ever want to make a pictorial quilt using an image that you didn’t take or draw yourself, yes you will need to get permission from the original owner of the quilt.  Here are some of the pics I got from you, and one or two I chose myself -  What I would like you to do this week is to take a photo (or two or three or four…) and pull the colour palette out. Something like this: And then load it into Canva’s palette generator, or something similar! The Canva one is here https://www.canva.com/colors/color-palette-generator/ and you won’t need to sign in or pay for anything, but there are lots of others. Just drag the photo into the box, and it will generate a colour palette below it for you. It’s very simple to use, but it doesn’t do much else. If you’re looking something a bit more complex, that you can change or tone your colours down and find other things that go with them, you an try the Coolors website which I think is completely brilliant. https://coolors.co/ Theres a little tutorial about how to use it when you first go there, so make sure and read it and then it’s really easy to find your way around. Its pretty fun and a bit addictive so make sure you have some time to play with it! The palettes they generate won’t pull every single colour from the photo, usually just the four or five dominant ones. It’s a starting place rather than a concrete surface. For this photo of the flower for example, Coolors didn’t pull the red out. You know the red is there - but the different dark shades are a good place to begin your palette, and then you can add the red in. If you don’t want to use a website, you can get out your coloured pencils, or some paints instead - or as well as. Even if you do use the websites, try taking the colours from the photo and using your art supplies to colour your block in, by shading like we did with the colour wheel. It might take little more time, but puling the colours out of a photo like this using your eye instead of a computer tool helps you to gain an understanding of how the shades bend together, and its also a nice mindful activity that doesn’t involve a screen! Once you’ve got your first palette generated, its time to start having a play. There is a block drawing in a seperate file for you to download below - all the measurements for the block will come next week. You can colour your block any way you choose, using the photo you chose. Here are my block explorations using the photo of the purple mountains. Here is the palette for that was generated by Coolors. And now here are my block shadings. This is a nice simple one using only four tones of purple, directly from the palette. Here’s another where I’ve introduced more pink shades to the purple to compliment it. And one where I shaded the block diagonally across, from dark to light. Then we get our colour wheels involved. You can introduce something to contrast with your original palette, even if it wasn’t in your original photo. Orange is opposite to purple on our colour wheels, so it’s a contrasting colour and will go nicely. This block is simple as it’s really only two colours, we will try one with a multi coloured palette next. Here is the Skittles photo, and palette. And here are my blocks - Next week we’re going to start cutting fabric, so you can start wandering through your stash to see if you have things that will represent the shades the block you choose. Theres a lot of half square triangles in this block, and I like to use a half square triangle template for doing them - if you would like one, I have them available at my website. The Colour Value Tools are also on the way, the manufacturer is just waiting on a price for the red acrylic. If you want me to put one aside for you and send an invoice let me know - they will be $14 AUS. I’m going to make quite a few different blocks with the view a quilt. I won’t have my blocks ready to show you next week because next Wednesday I will be teaching at Quilter’s Affair in Oregon! I will put a post up with your block instructions, and then the following week one about my classes and the quilt show, and then my blocks/quilt the week after that. Happy Wednesday friends, have fun playing. Sarah

Hi StitchyMites I hope you’re all well. After a quiet week I am finally on my way home to my studio on Friday! It has been nice seeing family but I will be glad to be back home. I’m not sure that Chippie will though - three weeks of other dogs and rolling in echidna poo and chasing through paddocks has been her bliss. Needless to say she is exhausted. A few bits of news this week before we go forward. For the first time ever, Aurifil are releasing an Advent Calendar! From the Aurifil peeps: A delightful homage to the holiday traditions of our childhood, it was designed to rekindle the pure, unadulterated joy that once sparkled in our eyes as we eagerly awaited the festive season. Each compartment holds one small spool of Aurifil’s 100% cotton thread, meticulously curated to bring a burst of excitement. Le Alpi Advent Calendar will have a palette of 24 hues includes five brand-new, limited-edition 50wt colors exclusive to this advent calendar as well as the introduction of five new shades of 8wt and a medley of Aurifil’s cotton thread weights. This is a pre order that will arrive around November 2024, and needs to be ordered from my website in the next few days, because once they’re gone, they’re gone - and I can’t order more. Don’t miss out, its going to be lovely. Order here Also, despite me thinking that the book for the Stop, Thief! BOM wouldn’t be out until 2025, apparently I am editing it in July and it will be in your hot little hands sometime in August. You can preorder at my website - and don’t forget that if you were a BOM member for Stop, Thief!, you have been sent a discount code. And also! I have a bunch of classes coming up in the next 6 months or so. My own retreat classes are in August in Sydney, you can find the bookings here. I have so much fun stuff planned, including goodie bags and prizes, along with the classes themselves. You can find all the info here I will be in The Netherlands and Germany in October - at Atelier Quiltlokaal and Bossche Quilts & Meer in The Netherlands, and Quiltzauberei in Germany. You can book by contacting the shops directly. I am teaching at Road to California in January 2025, and class registration opens on July 1, all the information will be at their website https://www.roadtocalifornia.com/ I will be teaching my brand new Tweedle Dee Project Bag at all these locations, as well as other things! I hope you’ll come along and stitch with me somewhere close to where you are :) On to colour! From last week’s homework, here are some value explorations from Sara and Jeanne, they show before and after of their arrangements with the naked eye, then after looking for the value through an artificial one. Its always interesting to see how much has changed. Of course, depending on what you chose to start with it can be very easy or very hard, and theres always a few than jump no matter where you put them. In Jeanne’s selections you can see that the purple fabric jumped places, but its the red one that catches my eye. To me it seems lighter than the pink tin both pics, but in pic #1 it’s less so. That’s because moving the purple has changed the value a little. Squint your eyes at the pics and see if you agree. Sara’s fabrics are interesting too - they have shifted around quite a lot after her black and white photo. The one that interests me here though is the blue with the white sunflowers on it. Sara has placed it with the darks each time, but that fabric isn’t actually about the colour of the background, it’s about all the white in it. I would try putting it right up the front with the lights and taking another pic in black and white Sara, and see what you think! :) This week I’m answering the questions I’ve been sent as we go through playing with colour. There have only been two so you’ve made it nice and easy for me . How do you photograph fabric to get the true colour? Sometimes, this is reeeeally hard. There are some fabrics that just won’t come out the right way, no matter what you do! Here are some things to try though - - Make sure you’re in natural light. Your colours will be more accurate and the fabric will look more real and true. The colours in a light bulb can change colours and reflect off fibres, especially when theres a warm bulb in or a really bright white one. - The colours in the paint on walls and surfaces you’re using for photography can also mess things up, so if you really want the colours are true as you can get them, use a white or very neutral background. You can always adjust this afterwards in a photo app or on your phone, but changing the warmth (yellow) or cool (blue) on the picture. - Use a piece of white cardboard or paper to reflect the light back onto the surface. Uneven light can make the fabric look strange or faded. Make sure that the light yours using isn’t making shadows or lines on your fabric. - We all have smart phones and access to apps and computer programs - use them! Sometimes its raining outside or you don’t have access to great light, so use the tools on your devices to help you get the colours right. Most often, brightening or darkening the photo and adjusting the warm/cool settings is all thats required. Adjusting the setting manually in this way is better than using a filter because you have control. - Take a lot of shots and work with editing a few of them rather than relying on just one. Sometimes the light in one photo will work better than another even though you don’t expect it to. 2. Do you work with fabrics from collections, when the colours are very collection specific? I don’t. I don’t ever, ever consider fabrics to be collection specific. If I do buy a collection, I immediately break it up and put the colours in the sections of my stash where they belong. Some designers have a palette they always work within, and the colours are SO very them! Think for example Heather Ross (orange, kelly green, pink, aqua), or Tula Pink (aqua, pink, apple green, purple). If you Google “Heather Ross fabric” (or whichever designer you like) a little rolling gallery of their fabrics will come up at the top of the page, and you can scroll across and see what I mean. This is by no means a bad thing - the two I named are two of my favourite designers! Their colours are very specific and help to define their brand and their style. There is absolutely no rule whatsoever that says you have to use their fabrics together. For me, their unusual and specific colours are what makes them so interesting to my stash. When I’m looking for “aqua”, aqua can be Heather Ross or Tula Pink or Anna Maria Horner or an aqua and white stripe or all four of those together! Fabric as a tool is about COLOUR, not print. Even the “uglies” in your stash are so so useful if you stop being worried about what’s printed on them, and instead begin to use them like paint. I hope those answers help! What do you think? More questions? Let me know in the comments! For your homework, I want you to look for a picture you would like to base a quilt on. This is NOT going to be a pictorial quilt!! We are going to base some blocks (or a whole quilt if you get excited) off a photograph and the colours in it. For example, something like these - You can choose one photo or four or 15, its up to you. They can be one colour, or many. Just choose something with colour palette you like - the subject of the photo is irrelevant. See you next week! Sarah x

Hello there StitchyMites I hope you’re all well! I’m still camping out away from home, and I’ll still be here next week too by the looks of things. And the week after that I’ll be off to Sisters for Quilter’s Affair! Life is a little messy at the moment, but we always muddle through don’t we. Sometimes having your regular routine disrupted is a good thing, I think for example my colour wheels and insights have been different not having access to my full and very extensive stash? Maybe I have looked at things with a different eye, being in the countryside and not at the beach. Next week we are going to look at some of the questions I’ve been sent from you guys - including *How to photograph fabrics well *How to use fabric collections when the colours are so collection specific Make sure and let me know if you have anything you want to talk about. After that we’re going to start a project using some of the things we’ve learned… there will be a bunch of options for you to make something large or small, so don’t worry too much about volumes of fabric yet. From last week’s homework, here are some fun “colour wheels” from Petra and Anna Marie! They both also sent me their fabrics they weren’t sure about. Particularly interesting is Petra’s greyish check - you can see that it leans to grey and black, but also to blues. Fabrics like this can be hard to classify in your stash, but they’re also very useful because they bridge lots of different categories. This week we are talking about tone and value. A tone indicates the lightness or darkness of a colour, which is most often achieved by adding white, black or grey. The tonal value is increased when you add white or light grey, known as adding a tint. The tonal value is decreased when you add dark grey or black, known as adding a shade. While we’re at it, we can also talk about hue. Hue is a term used to determine a colour’s position on the colour wheel, but also to talk about the temperature of a colour, for example a warm yellow or a cool green. So why are we talking about all this? Learning about colour through value, hue, tone, shade and tint can help you to understand how colours relate to each other, and why its OK to mix them all up. Hopefully when we start to make things using our findings in the next few weeks, you will feel a little more confident with your choices and not second guess yourself. Your homework for this week is to go into your stash and grab a handful of fabric. It can be all different colours and sizes of print. I want you to just grab it all without even looking to see what you got. Make sure you have at least 10 or so different fabrics. No picking and choosing! Once you have it, try putting it in order from lightest fabric to darkest using just your naked eye. You might find this easy or difficult, depending on what fabrics you have! Once you think you have it all right, take a photo of the order you had them in using your phone. If you have a value finder tool, you can use it for this next part. A value finder tool is a piece of dark red acrylic, usually a square or a rectangle. When you hold it over your fabric selection, it will reduce the colours to tones for you and make it much easier to determine their value. If you don’t have one of these and would like one, I’m having some made by my template peeps as we speak and I’ll pop them up on the website in the next few days! If you don’t have one, look at the photo you took with your phone and see if you can see anything that wants changing. Now change the photo to black and white - does it make a difference? If it does, move things around and then take a second photo (in colour) of the changes you made. You might be very surprised by how things look when you take colour from the equation and just look at hue and value. Once you’re done, email both photos to me! Have fun peeps, please let me know in the comments if you’re enjoying the colour experiments, or if you have any questions or topics you would like me to address. Happy week to all Sarah x

Hey hey Smites, I hope everything is good where you are. Life keeps throwing me curve balls at the moment, and I’m currently suddenly not at home for the next few weeks while we navigate my father in law’s sudden illness and a few other bits and pieces. Never simple but we plow along! It’s been very fun for me seeing all your completed colour wheels coming into my inbox. I hope you had a good time fossicking for bits of fabric, and we’re going to do some more of that today. Those of you that sent me colour wheels get a gold star for doing your homework! Here are some of the colour wheels I’ve been sent. Some interesting insights I found from looking at them - almost everyone went for colours that were very close to primary almost everyone went for fabrics that were very close to solid, not patterned or multi coloured As I’m unexpectedly not at home, I was a bit limited for this post by what I have thrown into my sewing basket before we left in a hurry - but that's actually made it more interesting as Ive had to work for my colour combos. Here are my primary colours: And my colour wheel with secondary colours: Today while I was pondering this post I had a play with some colour wheels that weren’t made from fabric. This is a good one to stretch you out a little bit. First I raided the fruit bowl, but I had to divert to the onion basket for the purple. Then I had a walk through the garden to see if that gave me some other interesting outcomes. Here is a wheel made of leaves. The blue was tricky until I thought about blue greys, and then I found half a dozen Australian plants with bluish leaves. Things like packaging and book covers and street signs are great too. Anything that you come into contact with can be put into a colour wheel if you’re looking. Here are a few fun ones I found online, as well as my favourite colour wheel of all time that someone made of the Queen :) Part of your homework this week is to stretch yourself by making a few more unexpected colour wheels - they can be all the same kind of thing like these, or a mix of different things in your environment. Try to see things through a slightly different eye this time as you’re looking for things to place in your grouping. Yes, look for things that can make a more traditional colour wheel (like my fruit colours), but also look for things that can make a colour wheel in a slightly different way, like all pastel or all darker colours. When it come to fabrics, colour can mean not just the solid reality of something like this yellow - But also the colours around them that make them read as yellow. Here’s a gradation of yellows I pulled out to bring with me. All these yellows are just grabbed from the top of my stash. You’ll notice the “orange” from my colour wheel above is in there, and here it looks very yellow. It lives in the yellow area of my stash, but its a real chameleon that fabric - and so are lots of others. Put it between two very orange fabrics, and its an orange, no debate. Same fabric, same lighting, different influence. Here’s another one - and this is one of the most contentious colour debates out there. When Carol sent in her colour wheel this week, she had taped a bit of aqua fabric to the top corner with the comment - “at first I thought this was green??” To my eye, this fabric is blue. There will be some of you bellowing that it IS green, I know. My husband insists that this aqua situation is green, but for me its solidly blue, and here’s why. Put it next to a blue fabric - Put it next to a green fabric - Put the three together. For me? So blue. Maybe for you though, its green. If the colour was analysed in a colour computer of some kind that told us what percentage of blue and yellow and green was used make that exact shade, we would know for certain, but the real answer here is… shhhhh… IT DOESN’T MATTER :) If I choose to use it with blues and make it a blue, then its a blue. If I choose to use it as a green and make it a green, then that’s what it is. Your eye will see what you tell it to see. Thats why when I use “GREEN” in a quilt, its never just one green, its 20 or 25 or 30. If I need 1.25 metres of green, that green will be made up of a slew of different fabrics, never just one. I never worry about wether they “go together” or wether they are the “same green”. I choose fabrics that read as green to me when they are together, and that look attractive together. I use blue greens and yellow greens and grey greens and mints all in the one quilt, without ever a moment’s concern, because the rules we all think we have to follow about colour are made to be broken. Colour itself is not something that can be put in a box, it’s something you have to roll around in, play with and not be frightened by, and then its YOURS and you can do whatever the heck you like with it. The second part of your homework this week is to choose a fabric you aren’t sure about - a purple-ish or a yellow-ish or whatever you like - and make two different colour stories using that one fabric, like with my yellow or aqua fabric above. For example if you choose an aqua, make a blue story with it and a green story with it. You will find the same will work for a lot of fabrics in your stash, you won’t need to look too hard! Please take photos of and email me your findings again, it’s fun for everyone else to see how different other interpretations are. Next week we will look at tones and then we can start thinking about what these things all mean to your quilts and how to apply them. If you have any questions you would like me to address, feel free to add them in the comments or email them to me too! Sarah x ​PS. While I was wandering around the garden picking leaves I met a friend! Isn't he gorgeous? He lives under a rock in the garden but he was going under the house, probably looking for some yummy grubs :) For those of you not in Aus, this is an echidna.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to have a play with some simple colour exercises. Some of them will be all about sewing, and some not about sewing at all. At the end of the few weeks I hope that you will have some new tools in your box the next time you think about a new quilt and where you want to take it. In every single class I have ever taught over the last 25 years of my teaching career, at least one person has told me they aren’t good with colour. This blanket statement is usually dismally delivered, apologetically, and with a sigh of finality. I’ve got news for you all - you are ALL good with colour. The most important thing that I can teach you about colour is that there IS NO RIGHT AND WRONG. Every single one of us gets out of bed in the morning and puts on clothing that looks nice together, and compliments our own sense of style. We know what we like to look at, and what makes a pleasing arrangement of tones when we see it somewhere or choose it ourselves. You all think those choices are made by someone else, and yes - usually the fabric or book cover or sofa cushion you’re admiring was designed by someone else, but you are able to look at that object or painting or flower or sunset and know what is pleasing to your own eye, and that is the first and most important step towards being “good with colour!” We all have it already within us, we just need to stop denying it and treating colour as some kind of magical unicorn we can never ride. Despite my earlier protestations, spending the past few weeks thinking about how best to start this class with you has dragged me kicking and screaming back to the colour wheel. Despite my deep loathing of art teachers everywhere thinking that people will be magically able to process colour once they possess a little circle full of coloured wedges, I’ve decided that the colour wheel has merit. So we’re going back to basics. I don’t want you to have to buy loads of things for these exercises and I definitely don’t want you to have to buy more fabric - but if you don’t have a packet of coloured pencils and some plain paper, I’d like you to pop out and get those things before we start. They don’t need to be expensive pencils and just plain copy paper or a note pad will be just fine - you probably want some paper that isn’t lined or gridded (for now). If you do want to invest in some nice quality pencils, I absolutely LOVE Palomino Blackwing pencils - I use their soft graphite pencils almost exclusively for drawing and their coloured pencils are absolutely lovely. They’re widely available, if you have a quick Google around you’re sure to find some near you. Ok we’re going to start at the beginning, where fabric has almost nothing to do with what we’re going to learn. Colour theory is the study of colour families and their relationships. I don’t want this to get too technical, but lets start with what we all learned as kids. The basic colour groupings are: Primary colours - true red, true blue and true yellow Secondary colours - you can mix two primary colours to produce secondary colours. Blue + yellow = green Red + yellow = orange Blue + red = purple Tertiary colours - mixing primary and secondary colours produces tertiary colours. Mixing different amounts will give you different hues of colour. For example: Blue + green = teal We will add to this list Tones/Shades - different grades of colour in a within one colour group. For example, light or dark blue Neutrals - a colour without much intensity or saturation, which generally goes with everything. For example, black, white, brown and grey. Today we’re going to start out with a very simple exercise of shading in the colour wheel. This wheel will be expanded on and played with in the coming weeks, but we will also then throw it out the window at some point, so don’t be put off. Sometimes you have to learn some rules before you smash them up. Start with one of the wedges in the colour wheel provided, and colour it in red. Count three wedges around to the right and leave them blank, and colour the fourth wedge in yellow. Do the same again, leaving three blank wedges and colouring the fourth in blue. Colour the wedge centrally between the red and yellow wedges, first lightly with a red pencil, and then with a yellow pencil, blending the colours to create orange. (Yep, feel free to cheat and use the orange pencil if you want to - but I kind of want you to see the colour change as you do it, to give you a little mixing buzz). Repeat to colour the centre wedge between the blue and the yellow, and between the red and the blue. You might find that if your pencils aren’t very porous, you need to blend them a bit with your finger or do a few layers of colours to make them blend. Once everything has blended, you have your secondary colours. Now comes your homework! You will need: Two copies of the Colour Wheel provided - Coloured pencils, pastels, paint, or felt tip pens (pencils or pastels are best) Paper Your stash Have a sort through your stash and pull out some pieces that are red, blue and yellow. This for a lot of quilters will be a challenge - not a lot of people find primary red, blue and yellow palatable. What I want you to do though is to find YOUR red, blue and yellow. They might be a little paler, or a little darker, than primary. They might be a bit greyer, or whiter. They might have other colours in the print - but I want you to find something that YOU consider to be predominately that colour. Once you find what you consider to be YOUR base red, blue and yellow, cut a piece around 1” square from them and glue them into the same wedges on your colour wheel in the same places you coloured in your fabric. Choose a green, purple and orange to go with them and do the same. If you come across any fabrics that you can’t quite identify - maybe thats red? But there’s a lot of yellow? I’m not sure what colour this is? Put it aside. Photograph your colour wheel fabrics and any rogue ones you found with your phone (or scan them if you’re fancy) and email them to me sarah@sarahfielke.com with “Smites Colour Class” in the subject line - and then you’re ready for next week! I’ll be showing you my wheel next time. Have fun Smites, I hope you enjoy your first little colour foray. Sarah x

​Hi everyone, just a short post to say that the winner of the pinnie giveaway for the Courting Sew Along is Sandy Diver! We're so glad that Sandy's number came up, because this very special version of Courting was made to commerate Sandy's dad, using some of his shirts. It's just beautiful Sandy! Please send your postal address to sarah@sarahfielke.com and we will pop your prize in the post. Congrats!​

Hello StitchyMites, Apologies for the late post this week, and a bit of a postponement. Sarah isn't well at the moment so the colour class will begin next week. Today she would like you all to know that the winner of the Courting Sew Along giveaway for StitchyMites is Jule März. Congrats Jule - please send us your postal address to sarah@sarahfielke.com and we will get your pinnie into the post for you. While you're waiting for the colour class next week, Sarah hopes you enjoy this video from the Australian Art Gallery in Canberra. The NGA has a small but wonderful exhibition of quilts on show until August 25, 2024. The Rajah Quilt, probably Australia's most famous quilt, is on display during this time. The quilt was made in 1841 on board the convict ship The Rajah. It has a wonderful story. You can read more about the quilt here - https://nga.gov.au/stories-ideas/the-rajah-quilt-1841/ Last night the Textile Conservator of the museum and the show's curator gave a wonderful talk about the quilt including some insights about the fabric, the conservation and even the seams on this amazing old textile. You can watch the talk back here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnOheTfzw1g Have a wonderful week everyone Damo​

​Hi everyone, and welcome to the last week of our Courting Sew Along. I have decided to keep the giveaway open for another week, because I know there are a few people who only joined in with the Sew Along in this past week! I thought I would give you some time to make some of the quilt and post it on social media before I closed it, so the winner will be announced next Wednesday. The details of how to enter are in last week's post. I also have two beautiful finished quilt tops to show you! This one is the Single bed size of the quilt, and it was made by Jule Marz. I love the stronger colours and contrast Jule has used, the quilt just sparkles! This quilt is the Queen sized version, and it was made by Sandy Spence. Sandy used some fabric from her stash, but also fabric from her dad's shirts, in memory of him. Its an absolutely beautiful thing to have to remember her dad, so so special. Well done Sandy. This week we are talking about borders. The border on the original quilt was originally planned to have some hearts pieced into the strips here and there. As the quilt was made for my bed and wasn't ever supposed to be a pattern, I got to a point where I just wanted it on the bed for winter so I whacked the border on and finished! :D Silly me though, I posted progress pics on the internet and then everyone wanted to make one too. Which is lovely of course, but now I wish I went the extra mile. I might have to make a cot sized one and add the border hearts, to add a photo to the pattern. The plan was for the border to look like this: Essentially all you need to do to make it is to decide how many hearts you want to have on each border, and then piece a few strips to 6 1/2" with the heart squares inside. You can add them like this: or like this: so long as they add up to 6 1/2" when they're finished. Piece them into the strips that are the same background as the hearts in the blocks, so they float in the strip - so on my quilt, they would be in the white border strips. Now I'm a pretty traditional girl when it comes to piecing, I don't like to take shortcuts. Thats mainly because I like to use a lot of different fabrics, and I like them to fall where my eye likes them, instead of being pieced into the same combinations every time. Not everyone is as bananas as me though, and if you're looking for a border shortcut, here it is! Cut full length strips from yardage or from fat quarters, at 2 1/2" wide. Sew a set of strips together along the length of the strip - I would make it no more than 6 or 8 strips at a time or you very much compromise your accuracy. Make sure you start with one colour and end with the other, or when you stitch them together you will have to add another colour strip in between! Sew one strip in one direction, and the next strip in the other direction - this helps to stop everything twisting and warping as you sew. Press the strips after each strip you sew on, for the same reason. When you have a set stitched, you can cross cut the set to make border sections - line your ruler up with the straight lines of the seams, and cut 6 1/2" pieces from the strip set. Then you can sew all the sets together to make your border strips. Much quicker - just much less random! I hope you've had fun making your quilt, don't forget to post your progress photos so that we can all see. Happy Courting everyone! Sarah x

Happy Wednesday Smites! While I'm beavering away on the final post for the Courting Sew Along, our colour class to start next week, the Big Woods pattern and the final instalment of Stop, Thief!, things are every so slightly bananas around the Fielke studio at present. I thought I'd give you a roundup of whats been occupying me outside of the obvious for the last few months. The enforced sitting about from my surgery has meant I've had some time to read in big chunks instead of stolen moments. In May I've read - A Death in Diamonds by SJ Bennett The royally brilliant fourth book in the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series! 1957 - a young woman is found dead in a mews house a mile from Buckingham Palace, wearing only silk underwear and a diamond tiara. When someone very close to her is implicated, the young Queen is drawn into the investigation… I have loved SJ Bennett's other books in this series, which is about the late Queen Elizabeth II. Our Liz not only is The Queen, she also solves crimes in her spare time. They're completely farcical and pretty funny, quick light reads and very endearing. This one is my least favourite in the series, which is to say that I still enjoyed it but it's a little slow. I would start from Book 1 if you're going to try this series. If you like The Thursday Murder Club, you will love these. Snow Fall by Jørn Lier Horst When the body of an Australian backpacker is found in Spain, an online group of amateur true crime sleuths springs up around the world, attempting to solve the mystery of her death. Foremost on the message boards is Astra, a young Norwegian woman whose feverish pursuit takes her closer than anyone else to solving the case. But just as she prepares to publicly unravel the mystery, she goes offline. No one in the group has heard from her since. This one is a proper crime novel, much more serious than the other two mentioned here. None of them have any gore or are particularly scary though, despite me enjoying the gory and scary ones too :) William Wisting is the detective character in this novel, which is translated from the original Norwegian. There is a whole series of books, but I read this one having not read the others, as recommended by a friend. I didn’t have any trouble picking it up as a stand alone book. It’s a great read, I particularly like the author’s details of small things in the character’s day - it makes them seem real, and also adds a layer because you don’t know when one of the little details is actually a big important one. I will read more of the books in the series for sure. and I'm just finishing off How to Solve Your Own Murder, by Kristen Perrin In 1965, Frances Adams was told by a fortune teller that one day she'd be murdered. Frances spent the next 60 years trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. Of course, no one took her seriously - until she was dead. I do love a crime novel but I didn't actually realise that all three of the books I've read this month were crime related! It wasn't intentional. This one is my favourite of the three, being a kind of blend of the other two. This book is fun, fast paced, swings between serious and fun, and has the slight violets and book dust whiff of an Agatha Christie. A little vintage even though it’s set in the present day. I'm just under 100 pages from the end and I don't know who dunnit yet, which is always a good sign in a crime novel. Very much recommend this one! Up next? A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. I’ve had the book in my TBR pile for ages, but Damian and I have been watching the TV series and loving it so much! Decided it was time to read it as the story is lovely and has really drawn me in. Which brings me to things I’ve been watching while stitching. A Gentleman in Moscow, obviously, which stars Ewan McGregor (yum!!) The New Look, which I think is my favourite TV series for quite some time (besides Bridgerton of course). Its about Christian Dior and how his fashion house was founded, and his very famous first collection that changed the face of post war fashion. I wasn’t even slightly interested in it as couture fashion isn’t one of my passions, but when I learned it was not only about Dior’s clothes but also his sister, who was taken to a Nazi concentration camp during the war, and Coco Chanel, who was a Nazi sympathiser and collaborator, my interest jumped back up! Aussie Ben Mendelsohn is Dior and as he’s one of my favourite actors that’s an added treat. I would watch this whole series again with no hesitation. Loved it. And of course, the new season of Bridgerton. Sigh. I went back and watched it all again from the beginning to make it last longer. Four more episodes coming in June. Colin Bridgerton back form his European tour may well prove to be the hunkiest of all the Bridgerton boys in my humble opinion. That hair! The open collars, and his long riding coat! Good lord. If you haven’t seen Bridgerton yet OMG WHY NOT :D It’s like eating a whole packet of TimTams alone on a cold rainy day in front of the fire. Pure indulgence and froth, beautiful clothes and beautiful sets, handsome hunky men, delicious formal period romances, interspersed with faux modern music and over the top characters. This is Season 3 but theres Queen Charlotte as well, which is the queen from the same storyline but giving you her history. I say history loosely - this is NOT in any way historically accurate. Even a little bit!! A small warning though, if you’re easily offended - yes this is a period drama but its also RAUNCHY, there are lots of very sexy sex scenes (no full frontal nudity) so watch with discretion and its not for the kids. (Colin! Penelope! The carriage!) And of course while I’ve been doing all this sitting and watching I’ve also been sewing and sewing. With Tula here and not feeling great I got a bit behind on my Stop, Thief! quilt, so I’ve been catching up on the border blocks so that I can put up the final post on June 15. When I have it ready I will post a picture for you, but for those that aren’t in the BOM we have just worked on the centre of the quilt, which looks like this: I am going to Sisters for Quilters Affair (https://stitchinpost.com/pages/qa-home) and the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show (https://www.soqs.org/) in just a few weeks, so I’ve been working on the fundraiser stitching for that. Each year the tutors are asked to make fabric postcards, which are then framed and auctioned to raise money to help the show. Here is my postcard for this year: This year we are also having an evening to celebrate Freddy Moran, one of my quilting heroes, who has been a teacher at Quilters Affair for many years and also an exhibitor. I love Freddy, she is just an excellent human. The tutors have again been asked to help out by making self portraits in the Freddy style. I am just stitching the facing down on mine today and then it will be in the post ready for framing and sale on the night. I’m looking forward seeing the look on her sweet face when she realises what everyone has made. Unfortunately all my classes at Quilters Affair are fully sold out with waiting lists, but if you’re thinking about coming to Sisters there are lots of other wonderful classes still with spots, and the show on Saturday is worth the trip in itself. Sisters is my absolute favourite quilting event and I teach there every year, put it on your bucket list - you won’t be sorry. And I know I will see a lot of you there! I’m also working on finishing the project bag for my Sew Surfside retreat in August, its been somewhat shunted to the side with all the other things happening. I have two more panels to applique and then it’s done. It’s a lovely size to fit everything for a handwork project, and the pattern includes a matching needle book and scissor protector. The top is going to close with koki clips and cord, which makes such a neat and cute finish for a bag! After this project has been taught at my retreat, my class at Waverly Patchworkers in Melbourne in September, my classes in the Netherlands and Germany in October, and again at Road to California in January 2025, I will release the pattern - but not before! Incentive to come along to a class near you and make it with me instead :) Next week we will start our Colour Explorations… if you want to start getting ready, the first thing we’re going to do is work on a monochrome exploration, so you can decide what colour you might like to explore. I’m going to use green, but any colour will do. You will need as many different fabrics in that colour as you can pull together from your stash - scraps are fine, but you will want different shades of the colour. We will go into it in more detail next week, but if you want to start fiddling then you can! See you on Wednesday. Sarah

Mother’s Day…. Something that was so simple when I was a kid is these days fraught with errors. There are those that think its too commercial. Those who think its insensitive to talk about it, as there are those who have no mothers, don’t get along with their mothers, are not able to be mothers. Those who want to shout about their perfect husbands and children and their shiny internet lives from the rooftops and make us all feel inferior. Did you know, Mother’s Day wasn’t originally a commercial holiday? During the Middle Ages in England, it was traditionally a day on which those who had moved away from their homes to work or to marry were allowed to visit their home parishes, and therefore their mothers. This became known, and is still known by some in the UK, as Mothering Sunday after a bible verse: "Be glad, barren woman, you who never bore a child; shout for joy and cry aloud, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband." Galatians 4:27 I have to say though I’m not quite sure what that has to do with Mother’s Day in its current form, but there you are - history is not always linear! In its modern form, it actually originated in the USA. A woman named Anna Jarvis from Philadephia organised a memorial service for her mother on May 12, which was the second Sunday in May. Her mother had been much loved and active in the community, organising groups to help promote women’s health and friendship. Within five years, every state in the USA was observing the day, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday. Although Jarvis had promoted the wearing of a white carnation as a tribute to one’s mother, the custom developed of wearing a red or pink carnation to represent a living mother or a white carnation for a mother who was deceased. Over time the day was expanded to include others, such as grandmothers and aunts, who played mothering roles. What had originally been primarily a day of honour became associated with the sending of cards and the giving of gifts, however, and, in protest against its commercialisation, Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday she had brought into being. I was quite interested to learn that a few days ago - I hadn’t ever known the origin of what we celebrate as Mother’s Day until then, I guess I just never thought to find out. As a mother who is without a mother, I was quite touched that Mother’s Day is at its core about celebrating a mother who is no longer with us. My mum was a great celebrator - she loved an occasion, a reason to bring everyone together, feed lots of people and pop a champagne cork. We always made a huge fuss of her on Mother’s Day because she always put so much effort into making a fuss of us all the other days of the year. As my boys have gotten older, all I really want is for them to come home for Mother’s Day. The flowers and cards and presents are all nice, but we spent Mother’s Day night watching football and playing board games in front of the fire. That to me is more of a gift than anything wrapped in paper, and I would give anything to have one more night like that with my own mother. Anyway thats all very maudlin! Here’s something fun for your Wednesday - did you see Tula’s Tuesday video yesterday?? She offered to make me the bag when she was here, but I had no idea she was going to go to so much trouble. Aren’t I lucky to have such a lovely friend?? Now I need to think of something to make her to say thank you in return! To celebrate the imminent arrival of my amazing bag with the Simple Folk animals on it, use the StitchyMites only code TULABAG for 20% off my Simple Folk pattern book, valid until next Wednesday May 22. Have a wonderful week peeps - I promise to be more cheerful next Wednesday. One more week of the Courting Sew Along and then we can start our colour lessons - I’ve been planning! Sarah x