 I'm looking forward to 2021 and hanging this colorful calendar tea towel in my kitchen! This design is exclusive to Moda Fabrics and will be sold through quilt shops. I've used colorful quilt block motifs mixed with some of my florals from Abby Rose, Painted Meadow and Solana. A couple of the ladybugs from Solana are bringing some good luck into the day too.  I have heard some people say they will add a calendar tea towel to a back of a quilt to mark the month and year the quilt was made. I think that is such a fun idea! I like to just collect them as a memento from each year and vary the designs. I also hang them for some time in the kitchen from a skirt hanger and I can then switch them out easily.  If you are interested in getting one of these, let your local quilt shop know you want them to order some. Along with this tea towel (which will be shipped to shops in November), Moda is also making some tote products! They have the same floral and quilt design but instead of a calendar they say SEW HAPPY. I was so excited to see the samples and did this video that shows them more on my youtube channel. And this fun fast one to get a feel for HOW MUCH fits into this large project tote! The totes have fun red handles and the regular sized tote and large project one have inside zippered pockets to hold those little things that so easily get lost. Or you can pop a zipper pouch inside the tote that holds rotary cutter, scissors, threads, etc. The zipper pouch has a nice strap handle to the side so you can loop it over your wrist. Another lovely feature in the large project tote is a pocket that runs along the width of the tote on the back side. It has a center seam so it doesn't flop open and its a great spot for some of your rulers, books, and patterns.  This is an example of the types of things I have if I'm taking a class or workshop for quilting, including fabric (did I mention it fits whole bolts of fabric?), cutting mats, rulers, sewing notions, rotating mats, and patterns and quilt blocks or tops. I am forever fighting the long rulers and mats and trying to keep them from sliding out of my arms and piles of stuff as I travel from car to class. I like to have my 24" long rulers and a mat that is at least that wide as well. All this stuff fits in the tote! Of if I'm going to see a longarm quilter, I have my quilt top, quilt back and possibly batting. Or my big embroidery/quilting hoop.  The totes and zipper pouches will be shipping to shops in December. Wouldn't this be a great gift for a sewing friend? I'm making up my list (and sorry Mom, you now know one thing you'll be getting for Christmas!) Want to see more videos with fabrics and quilts and fun stuff for sewing? Pop on over to my youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/c/robinpickens 
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HELLO 2020! I have a couple things I'm putting up in the house that are specifically for this year. Yes, calendars! Both print calendars (wall and daily) and calendar tea towels (at quilt shops or spoonflower).
I have been creating artwork for the Seize the Day line of calendars with Sellers Publishing for 10 years! My first ones were for 2011 but that means I was working on artwork in 2009 to get in for printing in 2010 to sell for 2011. I just finished up my artwork for the 2021 calendars and got it all sent in last week. You can probably understand why I sometimes get confused about what day it is or even what year it is!
There has been a lovely correlation for the past few years between my fabric lines and my calendar artwork and covers. It hasn't been intentional to make a cover that is an upcoming or existing fabric line, but the two often overlap and compliment each other. I'm so pleased that Painted Meadow is being used to sew with now and still in shops while those perky coneflowers and big fat bumble bees are buzzing around my calendar for 2020.
The first page of the calendar gives a grid of September-December of the previous year, so you can start using it early to transition into the new year. Since I have my calendar from the year before up till December 31st, I skip over using this and I usually feel that this page is a little forgotten in my studio. So maybe if I share it here it will have more life and space to shine.
The desk calendar has tear off pages for the days of the week (Saturday and Sunday share a page) with a variety of quotes and images. I save my pages to write notes on the back. I'd like to say I find all those quotes myself but I don't. The folks at Sellers Publishing find lots of great sayings and sentiments to fill your days with inspiration. I find ones for the wall calendars and a few daily but they put in a lot of effort to fill those pages with daily optimism. Thank you Sellers Publishing!
Side note: where to buy Seize the Day- Barnes and Noble often carries them, I spot them in places like student bookstores on college campuses and sometimes office supply places. I'm curious...would you buy this at a quilt store if they carried them?
And then there are calendar tea towels! I started doing these through the spoonflower competitions each year. As the competition draws close I update the previous designs to the calendar grid and year of the new year coming and I work on a new idea. This year I decided to work with the quilt theme and I created "Sewing Up the Year" tea towel.
Here it is in the Love Patchwork and Quilting Holiday Gift Guide. It makes a nice gift for the quilters in your life. I will be updating this towel each year to reflect the calendar for the coming year (usually around October or November)
A few more tea towels in my shop- calendar themed. There are non-calendar as well and you can check the tea towel collections on my shop page. All of the spoonflower tea towels fit on a fat quarter of linen cotton canvas. You can also get towels that are finished (hemmed and hang tag on corner in back) from roostery.com
A new item this year has been the calendar tea towel for MODA FABRICS. I designed one for 2020 that used the drawing lines from a few of my collections to make a lacy illustration of florals around the calendar grid.
I keep mine folded over a glass door on an antique cupboard in my office. I like to see the contrast of how the linear flowers go with the prints from my collections. Here it is with scarves from Painted Meadow and Abby Rose.
These tea towels with MODA FABRICS are exclusive to MODA and quilt shops. Give some love to your local quilt shop- we need and love them! I know my local shop was carrying them but they have sold out so if you are a shop owner and have these in stock, please comment and let us know so we can send folks your way!
I hope you are as excited for 2020 as I am. It already promises to be filled with lots of activities and shows- which is even more reason why I've got to start getting it entered in my calendar!  Do you have a tiny dancer who is performing in the Nutcracker? My daughter used to do ballet and she was in the Nutcracker twice. The Nutcracker Ballet is a lovely holiday tradition. I've taken my "Clara's Nutcracker Ballet" print from spoonflower and made four tea towels that fit on one yard of linen cotton canvas. You can make four tea towels (all the same design or one each of the four combined on one yard) on each yard of fabric to help celebrate your holiday traditions and add some ballet cheer to your holiday kitchen! Dance on!
Visit my spoonflower links for my Nutcracker collection and Tea Towels collections.  Sweet Watercolor Blooms tea towels by Robin Pickens on www.spoonflower.com Every year spoonflower.com has a calendar tea towel challenge for the upcoming year. I love seeing the wonderful solutions that all the designers come up with! I love my kitchen and I love a cheery, colorful tea towel hanging from a cupboard handle, folded as a set on the counter, or hanging on the wall as decoration. I usually try to do a set of 4 coordinating tea towels that I will gang up on one yard of linen cotton canvas (or you can order them individually as a fat quarter). This year I've been playing more with watercolor paint and I decided to try a painterly, fun, garden look for my towels.
Each year I update the ones I designed from previous years to reflect the coming calendar year. I'm almost done with those changes...got one more set to go! Also if you want a tutorial on how to do mitered corners (that is how I finish off mine) then check out my instructions from a prior year: http://www.robinpickens.com/blog/fun-floral-tea-towels-mitered-corner-tutorial Tea towels make lovely hostess gifts. AND, if you don't like to sew, pop on over to www.roostery.com (a sister company of spoonflower's) and order some that are already hemmed up for you. Take a look at the "Spoonflower special edition tea towels" category.  Color and more color...I love to play with different color ways and see how different a design looks in each! Here is my Deco Garden tea towel in gray and green colors. I've got my sample swatch on the way and I will be ordering this one and the citrus palette for my kitchen. I couldn't resist one more color grouping. I was thinking of a kitchen, two houses ago, where I had my cobalt blue kitchenmaid mixer on the counter and lots of warm orange and gold colors in the decorating. The jewel tone towel would have been the right choice for that kitchen. If you'd like to see these and more, check out my spoonflower shop!   I love old mason jars. The beautiful aqua blue of the glass reminds me of sea-glass and retro kitchens. When spoonflower.com had a competition with the theme of "spoons" I thought it would be fun to have the colorful plastic ones waiting for a bowl of ice cream at an afternoon party, displayed in lovely mason jars. Since then I created a set of tea towels using the party spoons and mason jars that fits an assorted four designs on one yard of linen cotton canvas. I recently updated the calendar tea towel for 2017.
You can find the group of four together on my spoonflower shop link here or find them individually and see other tea towel designs in my tea towel collections page. Thanks for visiting my spoonflower shop! http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/robinpickenswww.spoonflower.com/profiles/robinpickens  It's that time of year on spoonflower.com when the calendar tea towel competition happens. I love this challenge because there are so many amazing and lovely designs submitted- yummy visual treats to see!
This year I decided to use my Deco Garden motif to make a citrus palette towel to ring in 2017 on a cheery, happy note. Designs on spoonflower can also be ordered through their sister site Roostery.com in an already made tea towel. Now I just have to get this sampled, but I couldn't wait to share! |
About ROBINDesigner of colorful florals for Moda fabrics. Modern to transitional quilt designer. Illustrator, sewist, crafter. 
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