a long awaited publishment

For those of you who know me, you would also know that Birgitte Heitland is my praised long-arm-quilter and colleague. She is such a creative and successful woman and a pleasure to know. She has quilted several of my quilts, and we have worked together on coming up with wonderful quilting designs for them.

When the Spring Quilt Market 2012 was coming round, I offered to help her sew one of her debuting quilts called "OHO". I didn't know what kind of challenge I was getting myself into. She sent me the fabric including a Layer Cake™ from her fabric line - Juggling Summer. This is a really great fabric that reminds me of fall and it was really enjoyable to work with.

We had one big hindrance with this project. Brigitte wanted to use the "Sew Kind of Wonderful" curved ruler and ordered it from the United States. Now, if you live abroad and order something from outside the country, you know you are gambling. You never know when those things are getting to get delivered and will usually be stuck in Customs for six to eight weeks. We waited and waited and waited, but it wasn't passing through. I offered to make some plastic templates from her sketches. Of course, I made two templates of everything, because when you start cutting with a rotary cutter, you are bound to cut part of the template away.

I put everything else on hold for one entire week to sew together and "practice" sewing half circles. If you have ever worked with circles, you may know, they can be challenging. They were! I felt a little bit like the Karate Kid with "wax on - wax off." I have now mastered the art of sewing curved seams. Yahoo!

There was one faux pas in the quilt, but I will leave this one little secret between Brigitte and myself. I hope she forgave me for it as well.

Anyway, Brigitte was happy with the result and dearly compensated me. After a really good presence at the Quilt Market, she also told me that OHO would be published in the Fons & Porter magazine and they would publish the sewers name - that being me!! I was so tickled and started scanning the magazine every couple of months to see if my name was in there.

A few weeks ago, I was curious to see if anyone else had sewn OHO. I googled, and found that it was listed online at Fons & Porter. It was FINALLY PUBLISHED. I no longer subscribed to the magazine, so I had to find a company here in Germany that stocked it. I ordered it, opened it and found the page and laughed out loud! My name was misspelled! As always, my name is spelled wrong. I had the problem when I was a young girl that people exchanged "ou" for "au" in Trautman. But this way, I had never seen it written before. {Trotzdem war ich immer noch begeistert und auch stolz.} This was my five minutes of fame. It made my day.

I am still curious to see other renditions of OHO. I would like to see those photographs and to hear about your experiences sewing this baby together.

I must compliment and praise the artist, Brigitte Heitland. She is a fabulous woman - eine echte Power-Frau! She is creative, innovative, bewunderswert! I have followed her career for the last couple of years, and she is totally on fire. Everything she touches turns to gold. I was truly honored to be a part of her circle if just for a short period of time.

Congratulations, Brigitte!! You can learn more about her at www.brigitteheitland.de or www.qdservice.de

Yours truly,
Karen (Trautman)-Ackva

my Moda Bake Shop experience

Happy Friday everyone! The weather was great this week. I think the sun shined a total of three days which is a record for the year!

If you don't already know, I had a pattern accepted and posted on the Moda Bake Shop blog back in January. Here is a little follow-up post about my experience for prairie Traditions.

I submitted my pattern to Moda using a pre-cut layer cake in September of 2012. I was elated to receive an email a few weeks later telling me that my pattern was accepted. I would have to make the quilt again using a newer fabric line, but that was okay. (I could request three Moda fabric lines, one of which would be sent.)

A month later I received my package. Remember, the package had to be sent from Texas, USA to Ulm, Germany. And it had to pass through Customs that loves to put an extra high import tax on the fabric, because it is produced in Asia. I just love the Zollamt!  I was shocked to find out that the Sample Department was nice enough to fulfill my wish from the fabric line "HONEY HONEY" from Kate Spain. It is such a great springtime fabric!

Sewing the quilt and writing the pattern went like a piece of "cake" -pun intended. I took many photos along the way and wrote instructions using computer diagrams for better understanding. I like photographs, but sometimes diagrams tell me more.

I simplified the quilting to make it easier for everyone to accomplish. I used 100% cotton batting-my personal choice for most quilts.

After the quilt was finished, I waited for more than one week on that perfect day in winter where the sun shined for all of two hours. I rushed out with the quilt and my camera. I already had the location picked out, so the rest was quite easy.  Snap, snap, snap...finished.

I wrote to Moda that my pattern was finished and my photographs were uploaded. Lisa informed me of when my post would be scheduled. On January 7, 2012. I was so excited to see my quilt on their blog. I emailed everyone I knew and stuck to the computer like glue for an entire week reading posts. Thank you for your support!!

Kate Spain also contacted me and posted the quilt in a newsletter for her Flickr-Group - All Things Kate Spain. Wow! I was so moved that she even noticed me.Thank you for your support as well, Kate!

I look forward to making more patterns for Moda Bake Shop as well as other platforms.

I wish you a great weekend!