February is definitely my least favorite month of the year. Blah. Although I love the flowers, decorations and red and white loveliness of Valentine’s Day, it’s not enough to make me like February. I refer to it as Febru-dreary. It’s soooooo cold and that cold never gives up.
But there is one thing I love about February. The Pottery Barn catalog. Yes, I love Pottery Barn. I mostly just love looking at the pictures and dreaming that my house looks like that. In February, they give you a little glimpse of Spring. Hallelujah! I really need that little peek. And usually, they inspire you to refresh your home with my favorite color (besides black and white)- blue. Of course, they don’t call it “blue”. It’s much more hip to call it “indigo”. Okay, I’ll go with indigo. They suck me in and I buy a couple of their “indigo” pillow covers every year. I love those blue pillows. After the heaviness of winter, they really do make my house feel a little happier.
So why am I telling you the Pottery Barn story? Because that annual February catalog inspired our new Project Sweetwater box. It’s all about the blue. I really can’t use “indigo” because we aren’t that fancy. It’s blue. And it makes me really happy.
We thought it would be really fun to have the ability to create six coordinating pillows in the Project Sweetwater box. Six pillows really make a statement and can totally refresh a living room or bedroom. We started with a canvas panel. Each square is 18″ x 18″ and perfect for a pillow top.
And here are the pillows!
These are so much fun- but there is so any other things you can do with the canvas. The blue dot is definitely my favorite. It is so striking and versatile. Here it is in the pillow. We embellished the dots with a blanket stitch. That makes it even cooler.
We then used the blue dot to make the most adorable storage tote.
Those little knots are my favorite!
My other favorite canvas square is the patterned half square triangles. It takes all the work out of making half square triangles. 🙂 The hand stitching makes it look as though it is actually pieced.
We also took that canvas block and made this cute little zipper bag.
It’s also fun just to frame the squares. Here’s the “Choose Kindness” in a pillow.
And now in a frame:
You could also make a wall gallery.
We are also including some blue and white toweling in the box. It’s perfect for the pillow backing, but you can also make a cute towel.
If you don’t have a Project Sweetwater box and would like to try, you can sign up here. Remember, the boxes ship quarterly (this one in March) and you can cancel at any time.
I also want to give you a little background on this box. If you have been a long-time subscriber, you know that the box usually includes fat quarters and a pre-cut of a new fabric collection. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately), we ran into a little issue with the March box. Although we have several new collections each year, they don’t always match up with the timing of our boxes. That’s what happened this time. We do have two new collections- The Christmas Card and Branded. However, they come out very close to each other- one in June and one in July. Nothing near March! We were definitely in a pickle and the kind people at Moda were so willing to help us out! We designed this blue panel and they were able to rush it through for our March box. The great part about the panel is that the production time can be greatly sped up. For an entire fabric collection, it is approximately a year in between our submission and you seeing it in stores. We are so thankful to Moda for their help on this and we think the True Blue box is one of our best yet!
Another little thing you should know- this panel is exclusive to this box. You won’t find it anywhere except at Sweetwater! Also, you may notice that we don’t generally advertise or promote our Project Sweetwater boxes. It’s not that we don’t love them- we are very proud of them! It’s just tricky with subscription products. We have to place orders for fabric months in advance. It is extremely difficult to guess how many boxes we will need in March when we have to turn in the order the previous September. We generally have just a few boxes left over after we ship to our subscribers. They usually are totally sold out withing 2 or 3 days of the shipment. That is why we don’t promote them very much. We want to make sure we always have enough product for our subscribers. If we have a sudden increase in membership, we would be in big trouble. However, on the True Blue box, we have more a little more room than usual. It’s definitely not unlimited, but we do have a few more spaces available. This is a perfect box to try and after this box, membership spaces will be limited again.
Hope you enjoyed the preview, we can’t wait for March! You can find the box here.