Works in Progress

We are busy here at Sew-Ichigo.  A tea cozy featuring the Tea Kettle from Kitchen classics has gone to Liberty to live in their cafe.   You can read more about this here.

The features prints from the new Liberty Lifestyle quilting cotton collection.  I am using more of these prints whilst I play around with  Penny's new button set for Sew-Ichigo.  This little cutie is called 'Plain Jane' and she is a lovely easy make!  

And whilst I sit and sew listening to the tennis at Wimbledon, I have just had a break for strawberries!  As you probably have read here before, "ichigo" is Japanese for strawberry so I couldn't resist a picture.

I did have a little shock moment today when I picked up Modern Quilting issue 3 (UK based magazine).  An interview I did a while ago which features Sew-Ichigo is inside!

Our new pattern sets: 'Rainbow Rack of Spools' and 'Button It' go on sale next week here and at our craftsy store.  You can find all the Kitchen Classics patterns in the same places including individual patterns at Craftsy.  Penny has had a hard time recently with the forrest fires in Colorado and other difficulties but she is keeping busy, working and we are in constant touch.  She send me the funniest emails sometimes- I have to try not to laugh to hard out loud when I check my phone at work!

Pattern Snippets

New pattern news is coming soon and we have had a little detour from our plans, we were planing a little 'Happy Hour' pattern set- can you get the hint in there as to what it will be?  That is still coming but to get some new patterns to you a little quicker we are playing with a couple of sewing blocks and adding a lot of variations to give you a range of block use options.  They are being worked on as I write...

More news will follow soon!

Patchwork Pottery loveliness

The sweet Laurraine has worked her magic on our Kitchen Classics pattern set and has posted a review on her blog. 
Here's a sneek peek of the label she made, but you'll have to click over to see the Enamel Coffee Pot, Teakettle, and KitchenAid she made.
Thank you Laurraine!  Kerry and I absolutely adore your work!!

Kitchen Classics single patterns now available!

Things have been kind of quiet here in Sew-Ichigo-land lately.  Kerry and I have both had a few things going on so we pushed the release of our next pattern set to the end-ish of June.  I'll give you a little hint what it will have in it, think refreshments.  That's all I'm sayin'.  But I will show you something that just might show up in the set, revised of course....

So until we get the next set up and going, we had the bright idea of offering up each of the individual patterns from the Kitchen Classics pattern set as singles.

If you haven't already bought the set, you can now order each individual pattern (choose from the Vintage Label, the Enamel Coffee Pot, the Teakettle, or the KitchenAid), here.

And if you have already bought your Kitchen Classics pattern set, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support!

Got your kitchen classics set yet?

If not, you're in luck!  Head on over to Joy's blog, the owner of A Joyful Soul Fabric shop and enter the giveaway she is hosting for two Kitchen Classics paper piecing pattern sets!

Joy pieced this and will be using it for her kitchenAid cover she will be posting about on Wednesday!  Isn't it fab???

Quickie Tip: PDF Pattern Downloads

Welcome to a rather unglamorous post on how to download and save a PDF pattern.  E books are starting to overtake 'real' books on site like Amazon and paper patterns are following suit which has many benefits; they are much quicker to produce, they are available wherever you are in the world and you can save them to print out on thick paper and if you mess up, they should be there to print out again.  I thought I would take you step by step through how the Sew-Ichigo pattern reaches you in case this is a new experience for any of you.   You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the PDF, this is free and available here.   When you purchase your Sew-Ichigo pattern you will receive an email like this:

Notice the note- the link expires after 3 attempts.  This means that if you are looking at the email on your phone and click the blue download link three times you will use up all the available attempts!   When you do click this is what you should get a Sew Ichigo message next :

Clicking will take you to the option to save the file somewhere onto your computer .

26th May 2012 Edited to add-  we have now managed to make this a single PDF download without a  Zip file but I will leave the rest of the info below as it is useful for other downloads you might use!  With a single download, all you  will need to do is save it either onto hard drive, disc or cloud e.g. Dropbox.
As our files are quite big we store them in a Zip file which compresses the size and makes them easier to handle.  Inside the Zip files you will find 3 PDF files for this pattern set.  My email links automatically opens through firefox and the default option is to save the file so I click OK.  The Zip file automatically saves to a file called Downloads, it may be a different place for your computer.  Give it a little time to download...watch the blue line to see when it is ready!

The zip is ready but I know from past experience that if I just leave it in Downloads, I will never find it again so I click the zip file to open it...

And a folder called Zip5 pops out- you can see it at the top in the pic below.  You could save the whole folder- right click and save on the location of your choice, I usually chose Desktop initially so it is in easy reach.

When you open the folder you finally get to the PDF files inside.

In the first file, pages 1-13 this is the front cover, now you can start using your pattern!

I also have an ipad so to make sure I can access all my PDF patterns on it I save them to Dropbox and have a folder for all my PDF patterns.  I like to use my ipad to display instructions rather than print them out so this is an ideal way to have all project available.   Dropbox is a free 'Cloud' based storage system, basically an online filing cabinet which you can store files on for either easy access or security- a crashed computer would mean losing all your PDF patterns amongst all the other things.  There are other Cloud systems out there as well as Dropbox.

 I hope that sorts out a little of the mystery of PDF patterns for any of you who are new to this.  Personally I know I have less chance of me losing a PDF than a paper pattern, I only have to look at a pair of scissors and they are gone so I have no hope with bits of paper!  You can buy 'Kitchen Classics' here

KitchenAid inspiration.....

One of the exercises I had the women at my workshop do last weekend was to piece a kitchenAid.  7 kitchenAids by seven women.  Starting in the top row at the left and going clockwise is Tara, Randi, Jessica, Melodee, Ruth, Lisa, and Carmen! 

I love how I can see everyone's personality in their fabric choices.
Tara, bold a just a little bit edgy
Randi, simply sweet
Jessica, joyful and adventurous
Melodee, simple and precise
Ruth, soft and inviting
Lisa, unequivocal and undaunted
Carmen, fearless and fun

I am so proud of each and every one of them, didn't they do a fantastic job?

Very, very nice work ladies!!