Jan
1
10 Year Anniversary!
Filed Under Patterns, Prizes | 4 Comments
Happy New Year!
It’s an momentous day in the Mackenzie household! It was exactly 10 years ago today that I stepped a foot into the professional side of quilting and published my first book.
Even though I’ve always been an appliqué person, I started with something that was all piecing, all the time. Dog Cabin was a huge endeavor. I had to relearn everything I had learned in my sprinkling of digital-media classes, and climb a mountain of details that ranged from procuring ISBNs to learning about distribution channels to approaching catalogs and a million more things. I was on fire, and I loved every minute of it. Dog Cabin was picked up immediately by Checker Distributors and placed in Connecting Threads, and all of a sudden I had a career.
Dog Cabin is a great little book. I really flexed my illustration muscles and included tons of graphics showing everything from:
How to straighten up the grain of the fabric to…
How to measure and rotary cut…
To the dust bunnies that will accumulate in your house when you finally bust out that novelty fabric you’ve been “saving.”
It’s a fantastic book for the beginning quilter and also, I might add, a very fun project for quilters of any flavor as you rest your right brain, engage your left brain, and sew sew sew!
To celebrate the anniversary of this classic book, read on to the end of the post to see how (if you’re in the U.S.) you can get a copy of Dog Cabin, free!
In the last 10 years I’ve published eight more of my own books, and had three books published by Martingale. I still love it and I still feel like going strong!
In the last part of 2012 I started on a new endeavor, producing a line of stand-alone patterns. It’s really exciting to be doing something new. I’ve put out some few patterns in the past, but now I’m getting organized about the whole thing. UPC codes! How long I’ve known o’ ye, and finally we meet!
My two new patterns:
This little quilt appeared in my book Easy Appliqué Blocks, now available exclusively as an eBook from the publisher. When the print copies were all gone I received the go-ahead from Martingale to publish this design on its own. It’s been the most-requested pattern in my booth, so I’m so delighted to be able to offer it now!
Sandy Klop of American Jane is a buddy of mine. I LOVE her fabric from Moda! When I heard she was coming out with a new line called Savonnerie (Soap Factory) I kept an eagle eye out for it. As soon as the images went up on the Moda website, I knew it would be perfect for this pattern that I had in mind for a classic Dresden Plate. Moda graciously sent me some cuts of fabric, and I’ve been industriously working on the wall quilt ever since. I went all old-school and hand-quilted it! It really is like riding a bike and it felt good to go back to my roots as a quilter.
Okay, back to Dog Cabins and 10-Year Anniversaries. In celebration of this milestone, for the next week, through January 7, 2013, if you order one of these patterns… or anything at all… from kaymackenzie.com you’ll receive a copy of Dog Cabin absolutely free. That’s right, you can order a package of needles and you’ll get the book, and I’ll even cover any extra shipping. Limit one, U.S. customers only, while supplies last.
Happy 2013!
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Sep
21
My first appliqué
Filed Under Hand appliqué, Turned edge | Comments Off on My first appliqué
A blast from the past! When you see these “classic” fabrics you’ll probably recognize the year as being circa 1992. I enrolled in a beginning quilting class at Jordan’s Quilt Shop in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Little did I know how that class would affect my life. I know you know what I’m talkin’ about.
We made a four-block sampler. I told my instructor, Ann Jordan, that I liked the Dresden Plate block the best. She said some fateful words to me that day… “Well, you just might be an appliqué person.”
Did she shape my fate as a quilter with those prophetic words? It turned out to be the absolute truth.
When I quilted my sampler, I went back and showed Ann how the appliqué stitches in the center circle pulled out a little. She said. “That’s why the stitches need to be really little, and tight.” It was an epiphany. Gone forever from that day forward were the big honking stitches perpetrated on my projects in 8th grade home-ec.
Thank you Ann! I hope you are enjoying your retirement. I’ve since moved away from Ohio, and I heard that Jordan’s now belongs to someone else, though they kept the name.
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