DaGMT - Day 15 "Holy ^&*&*@!$ *(^#!"

You know that moment in the day when you realize you will be accomplishing nothing for the remainder? Today that moment for me coincided with the moment I released my inner truck driver when at 10:30ish am, I discovered that a quilt I designed is on the cover of the newest issue (April/May 2012) of Quilter's World magazine.



I almost died of shock, then I shook so hard I couldn't breathe, then the expletives were flying as I danced around the house screaming. Someday, like maybe next week, I will look back on this behavior and think "What a loser I am", but for today I'm happily a huge geek.

For a brief moment, it was a little sad that I so covet the quiet house in the morning that there was no one home to share my joy, but thankfully my husband answered his phone and did a remote happy dance with me. My apologies to his coworkers; I know it isn't pretty. Also, the children would have been horrified by my language, not to mention my dancing skills, so it's probably best that they were not exposed to the whole scene.

This quilt, "Quite Contrary", was born last April at my guild's annual spring retreat at Lake Shore Farm in NH. I quite literally put this thing together from scratch from 9:30pm to midnight on Saturday evening while suffering from moderate to severe corneal damage after burning my eyeball with ClearCare solution. I designed it thinking it would be a freebie on my blog, but Maria Peagler posted these words that changed my mind "Free is not a business plan." So I said, "What the heck? I'll shop the thing around and see what happens."

Holy happenings! Never in a million years would I have thought this thing would end up on the cover of a national publication!

Will I be pouring ClearCare into my eyeballs to inspire future quilt greatness? No. But I'll admit it's slightly tempting.

Mini Oscar speech: Thank you to Melissa Heys, of The Completed Quilt (www.thecompletedquilt.com) who is truly a fabulous and amazing machine quilter who always manages to fit me in and make my simple designs breathtaking. Thank you to Renae Mathe for whipping up a sample to make sure my directions made sense. Thank you to Carolyn Vagts and the entire staff of Quilter's World for being so easy to work with and making my entire month.

But mostly, thank you to my daughter, Eva Catherine Helfter, who only threw seven fits rather than 20 when I had to ship this quilt off to QW for almost a year rather than immediately putting it onto her bed where it was meant to reside. Every now and then over the last 10 months she has said to me "WHEN am I getting my quilt back? I NEED my quilt! My other one is so BABYISH!" Well Kitty, now your quilt is famous, you can lord this fact over your sisters until the end of time, and I think you can get over it.

Oh, and I also got "Kickin' Stash" (loving this name, and I think it's going to be THE ONE) cover quilt put together and four out of 12 border strips on.



I'm so glad this good hair day wasn't wasted on an overall crappy day.

Bring it, dual February breaks coming up. I feel like I can take you on now.