Bird Brain Designs

This weekend I am drawing some new designs for doggies and kitties. April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month so Bird Brain Designs needs a new pattern or two to honor animals.  With your help we can help unfortunate critters out in the world Shortly we will finish up 2 more pillowcase designs to make a pair of patterns for you.  I love using my embroidered pillowcases and I hope you will too!  We will keep you posted in our Newsletter and website.

Every March the orchards and vineyards glow with beautiful bright yellow mustard blossoms.  So cheerful and spring like! This walnut orchard near the studio in Lakeport, California, is covered with mustard.  Later in spring the plants will be plowed into the soil adding lots of goodies to make the walnuts healthier and yummy for October’s harvest.   All we see is a carpet of yellow to make us smile.

Tina’s hens are on an egg laying spree so today she brought some to dye.  My son and family are coming for a visit from Idaho on Saturday.  They will be surprised to find a big basket of colored eggs for breakfast.  We didn’t hard boil these cuties so all the scrambled and fried eggs will taste even better with a colored shell!  Five of the girls lay beautiful pale green eggs and the six others lay lovely brown eggs some with charming darker brown freckles.  Cute chickens! Here is what Anika and Zane will find when they open the refrigerator – a fun and full basket surprise of brightly colored eggs for breakfast. Get out your eggs and dye them.  Something fun just because……Happy getting ready for the bunny. Robin

Our winner for our Friendship’s Garden Quilt is Jeanette Williams Our computer selected Jeanette’s name from several hundred folks (we were surprised and pleased to see so many of you like our designs) who entered their name. In her email entry Jeanette said she “hoped her garden would grow” by winning the pattern.  I think we might see a photo of her stitched lap quilt. Congrats to you, Jeanette, I hope you start stitching right away! I hope you all enjoyed a fun International Quilting Day with your friends and family.  Many of you told us who you were with and what you were doing….fun! Enjoy your pattern, Jeanette, and we want to see a photo of the finished quilt with a smiling person underneath!

Saturday is International Quilting Day.  Enjoy getting together with your Quilting Pals and create something nice for someplace or someone. You can, also, just enjoy each other’s company as you do what you love – Stitch and Quilt! Enter our contest and WIN a pattern for our Friendship’s Garden Quilt .  You can make all those super quilting friends and family a pillow with one of the 9 quilt blocks or create the entire lap quilt! Email us your name and address to info@BirdBrainDesigns.net Put Quilt Pattern contest in the subject line We will announce the winner on Monday, March 19 on our blog at http://birdbraindesigns.blogspot.com/ Best of luck to you, our friends.

We have another Freebie design for you to whip up for Saturday.  You may have missed it when it was published as our March gift to a couple of years ago.  Still just right for 2012 This little kite with shamrocks on it is QUICK & EASY to stitch and you will have a new towel in no time! Have some fun and enjoy a little relaxation for yourself, please.

Get ready and make one of our St. Patrick’s day FREEBIE designs for the special day.  We are ALL Irish on March 17. Visit our Free Design Category and print out the Shamrock Emery & Scissor Fob .  Create your own Shamrock with your stash of Wool.  We have made a handy kit for you too with all the wool, #8 Perle cotton, ribbon plus the emery to fill your Shamrock…just visit the FREEBIE on the website to order.

Our 3rd embroidery design in our series of Fruits and Veggies for 2012 is a plump and shiny RedWork Apple . Just reminding you to print out your Apple pattern and embroider the RedWork design on a useful Sage Green Dunroven House tea towel.  You can, also, stitch on muslin to create a cute little pillow or add to an apron bib to spark cooking this coming spring! I used Sticky Fabri-Solvy to print the design and finger press the apple onto my tea towel for embroidery.  So quick and easy to get ready to have some fun without getting out your light box and tracing the design by hand!  The embroidery design is perfect and accurate and dissolves away in a flash.  I place the completed towel in my kitchen sink and watch the warm water pour on the towel and see the Sticky Fabri-Solvy dissolve right before my eyes.  Give your towel a rinse under the faucet and dry on a towel.  Nifty stuff! Print out all 3 designs so far for 2012 and get your collectio...

Tina and I had a great show at Sew Expo in Puyallup, Washington.  Seemed everyone from shoppers to vendors had a successful 4 days. The weather was cold but “normal”.  Not too much rain or snow, just lower temps than we Californians are used too!   Very happy for the heater in Lucy. Had fun up and down 3 states from home and back again shopping at our favorite antique haunts and good places to eat.  Visited our friends at the Antique Deli in Kalama, Washington for delicious soup and chicken salad sandwiches, our usual favorite.  What can be better?  Antique shopping and lunch all in one stop!  Give them a try when you are in the area.