Diamond Dazzle Part 4 - It's Sneaky Peak Time!

Or it will be if I actually was successful in converting that pdf to a jpg online. But what the hell. It's 10:30pm, I have nothing better to do than wait to hear a little 'beep beep' in my in box to see if it worked, so in the meantime I'll spend some time with all of you and update you on the lengthy ridiculousness of this project.

When we last left each other in the saga of "Beth attempts to use EQ7 to design a quilt", I was nursing a mostly dead all day computer - forcing me to face the learning curve of converting all I had done already to my laptop; I was sewing the Diamond Dazzle group quilt together and wasn't quite done yet; and I was completely dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to convert the template xps files to anything usable. All this while still maintaining my constant elegant demeanor of a 1950s housewife and making sure the children didn't go more than 2 hours without snacking on something. It's really been quite exhausting.

Suffice it to say the learning curve was steep but I am now on the downside of it, the group quilt is together and gorgeous and has even made it's debut in several trunk shows and a private viewing or two, and Andrea Bishop at EQ is a goddess on earth for putting up with my questions and issues with the xps thing. The bow in my hair and cold martini glass weren't always quite as starched or frozen when Joe came home from work, and the living room may have turned into a Formal Laundry room, but by God, the children had a snack every 2 hours. I'd say overall it was a successful month with a good outcome, if a bit long in coming.

Having sent Diamond Dazzle, which in it's infancy was an 8 page normal sized pattern and grew up to be a 16 page full color 8.5" x 11" booklet, to the best printer for these needs in the world (http://www.smartpress.com/) and with the expectation that a big box of patterns will arrive here on my doorstep at any moment, and there has been that 'beep beep' in my inbox I was waiting for, I now feel I can reveal, here for the very first time, the front and back covers. So Ta Dah:

The front:

If you can't enlarge it, that box under the title says "A ten carat quilt in five sizes with two finishing options". I debated on the size of the rock, but nine carats seemed two small and eleven was just gaudy, so ten it was.

And the back, which I honestly love for all the cool quilts on it:

Every time I look at any part of this thing I feel like I deserve champagne. It was that painful and I am that proud of it. As for the rest of it - well, you'll just have to wait a few days to request one of the very first, hot off the press copies.

One more thing, though, that might be of interest before I leave you to find my bed, is that the table runner in the lower left corner of the back, the blue/greeny one, will be showing up on my EPQD facebook page next week as the April Giveaway in my 2011 Giveaway Extravaganza, and all likers, new and old, will be able to qualify to win that very table runner as long as they play by the rules of the contest, which will be forthcoming mostly because I haven't figured them all out quite yet. That's how I roll, hotties.

Thanks for hanging in there as I have squirmed and complained and fretted and moaned and generally acted like the first designer ever to design a quilt. I'm hoping all the drama will qualify me for Quilt Diva-hood soon.