Welcome to Blogathon Canada 2014: + Giveaway!

I'm happy to declare that Blogathon Canada 2014 is now off and running!  This week-long festival, organized by Sew Sisters, celebrates quilting in Canada and its on-line community.  We're starting off in BC, with me and Stacey in Stitches as today's hosts.  My job is to say a bit about myself, and to lead you to some other provincial talent.  Plus, I get to offer a great giveaway!

I'm Jessica, and I started quilting over twenty years ago.  I discovered Japanese quilts and fabrics early on, and they have been my special passion ever since.  The internet made it possible for me to acquire far too many kimono silks and other traditional Japanese fabrics, so in 2008, I opened an Etsy shop, Momiji Studio, to sell bags and other items made from my stash.  "Momiji" means maple in Japanese, so as an immigrant, I named my shop in honour of the land of the maple leaf.  Shibori indigo dyeing is my latest obsession, as anyone who has read my blog over the past year knows.  A few days ago, I finally finished my first quilt top made with the fabrics that I dyed in the summer:

There were some scraps and a couple of blocks that didn't make it into the quilt...

...so I immediately decided to make them into a mini-quilt!

It's not quite done yet--I still have to sew down the binding on the back and then make a label with the tiny bits of leftovers that still remain.  I confess to cheating just a little bit--the quilt top didn't seem quite finished when I ran out of scraps, so I went back to the stash for the dark strip running across the top.  That final bit really did turn out to be the pièce de résistance!

For more on my creative process and other quilts, there's a post from the "Around the World Blog Hop" back in October, and you're welcome to take a peek at my studio as well.  I'm also a founding member of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild, which provides a wonderful, fun, energetic, and creative home for the fabric-obsessed.  If you're ever in Vancouver on the third Monday of the month, please come and visit us! 

For more BC-based quilting talent, check out the blogs below, as well as the links on Stacey in Stitches, my fellow host today for Blogathon Canada:

Holly's Red Bike
Explore Fibre
Felicity Quilts
glitter, vinyl and thread
Leah @ L3 Designs
Nita Dances
Paul's Block Party
The Quilting Edge (Marianne has home bases in Edmonton and Victoria, so here in BC we share her
         talent with Alberta.)
Shhdesigns
Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild
Winding Bobbins

Last but not least, I have a great giveaway for you from Sew Sisters, the terrific quilt shop in Toronto that founded Blogathon Canada.  I chose a bundle of ten FQs from Chérie, Frances Newcombe's new line for Art Gallery Fabrics:

If you want a closer look at these fabrics, click here.  I love the fun, airy, light-hearted, yet elegant look of these designs.

The giveaway is open to anyone in the world with a mailing address.  To enter, please comment below before 11:59 p.m. PST, on Nov. 23.  If you are a no-reply blogger, make certain to leave your email address in your comment--if I pull your number but can't contact you, I'll have to draw another number.  I'll announce the lucky winner on Nov. 24!

You'll find opportunities to win more stash over at Stacey in Stitches, as well as an exciting giveaway from Aurifil over on the Sew Sisters blog, so hop on over and continue the fun!