DaGMT Day 3 - "You'd Think I Was a Shoe Girl"

In reality, I probably own about 6 pairs of shoes per season. It's barely enough to qualify me as a woman. What can I say - I'd rather spend my money on fabric and apparently, this month, hot water heaters and new tires. Woo hoo!

But I do love the shoe shape for a base for practicing some fun embellishment, as is evidenced by the shoe appliques I used both in my Once Upon a Time book and my Shoeby Dooby Doo pattern. Not only are they fun to jazz up with your own shoe personality, but the shape of them is pretty simple for even new machine appliquers.

A couple of years ago before I went to Spring Market to help promote "Once Upon A Time", I asked if some quilters could help me out by making some appliqued and embellished 12" shoe blocks that I could use in my Schoolhouse presentation to demonstrate that really, the sky is the limit when it comes to what you can do with a few beads and baubles. A la Prince Charming, I returned most of the shoes to their rightful owners, but a few told me I could keep them. Today I UFO-busted and turned them into a quickie quilt.



I decided to have some fun with the quilting, and decided I was going to freehand quilt in some names of kinds of shoes as part of the quilting. Judge me if you will, but I had a hard time coming up with enough different types of shoes to do four types per block, and had to google "types of shoes". What did we ever do without google? And is it appropriate to not capitalize it? Do I care? Not today.

Witness the cute word "espadrille" quilted in. I will have you know that is one type of shoe I thought of on my own.



Sorry this one is sideways, but I am sure if you look hard enough you can see more types of shoes in there.



I also finally got to play a little with some of the Scrappy New Year blocks that have come in so far. I created an album on my EPQD facebook page and would love for you to take a look at it: www.facebook.com/EvaPaigeQuiltDesigns. I am not sure why that isn't linking like it should, but you can also get there by clicking the snowman button in the left column.

I did say under no uncertain terms that I really didn't care if participants made all four of their blocks exactly the same or used different fabrics/colors for each, but now I am so thankful to those who did all four the same because it makes my choice so much easier. I cannot believe how stunning they all are and choosing just one from some of these ladies is going to kill me.

Enjoy! Remember to keep sewing over the weekend!