Ringing out 2012 with Quilter's World

Back in the fall of 2010, I made "Work more with magazines" a goal/pipedream for EPQD. While one could have interpreted my resolution as "make more cut and paste collages", and had things not gone as they did I certainly could have whipped up a cut up magazine and Mod Podge delight or two to fill the square, I'm thrilled that this has been one goal I've had some fun successes with this year.

I mean really, who can forget my crazed lunacy that quiet Wednesday morning when I found out I had a cover on Quilter's World ("Quite Contrary") and you heard me scream like a banshee even where you were?

Let the record show that 10 months later I'm not at all horrified by my behavior that day, and am happy to reenact it for you at any time.

Quilter's World has truly been a fantastic periodical to work with for my little company, and I've been so fortunate to have apparently become integrated into their little designers circle. Summertime saw my second pattern with them in their August issue ("Contemporary Nine Patch") and I am happy to announce that I'm ending the year having recently received my Feb/March 2013 issue, featuring my "All A-Flutter" Valentine wall hanging on page 88.

This was my first foray into the world of prairie points, and I absolutely loved designing this quilt. The three dimensional-ness of it is just way fun, and I know you'll all be shocked to hear me say this, but what a cool way to USE UP SMALL SCRAPS!  I never anticipated that designing quilts that use up scraps would become a bit of a modus operandi for me, but everyone needs a challenge now and then and I guess I have found my go-to challenge.

A couple of close-ups so you can see the cool fabrics I was playing with out of my box of pink scraps; I do love the look of pink and navy together.

One thing I truly love about Quilter's World is how they like to add related projects to some of their patterns. This was the first pattern they accepted from me that they then asked if I would add to it a smaller, related project involving prairie points, and I was glad to comply but a little freaked at the same time, since I wasn't sure what kind of small project would work - did they want another heart-y, Valentine-y thing? Did they want something totally different? Should I just ask, or would that make me look like an idiot?  I do love what I came up with - a 3" x 5" pincushion in totally different colors and using even smaller prairie points, and STILL made completely with fabrics from my stash.

It's cute even upside down. And true confession - I think I like the bonus project even better than I like the original! Maybe because it's so quick and bright. Just like me, don't you know.

So what are my goals and pipedreams for 2013? In regard to magazines, it's to see if I can get something published on a page that doesn't start with 8-. So far I'm three patterns and an article on page 80+, and while I don't know if that is a big deal or not, it might be fun to end up on page 47 next time to see what that is like. In regard to the rest of EPQD, I just sent in my booth contract for Spring Market in Portland, where I will be an exhibitor for the first time and I am freaked and thrilled over it, and I hope to continue to create cool patterns as they pop into my head and find their way to fabric.

In the near term, I've got a new group project coming up in January, and I certainly hope to run the best, most exciting, and most entertaining UFO-Bustin' event on the entire world wide web in February with "Drop and Give Me Twenty" starting February 1. If you haven't made plans to join in yet, what could you possibly be waiting for? Those UFOs aren't going to sew themselves, you know.

Happy New Year, Hotties! Thank you for a wonderful 2012 and in the humor of my 10 year olds, see you next year!

Book Review - "Build Your Best Log Cabin", Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting

I was asked last week via email by the Online Media Coordinator for Fons and Porter if I might be interested in reviewing a free downloadable booklet their company has recently put out entitled "Build Your Best Log Cabin." Email being as hard to interpret sometimes as it is, I actually had to have my husband read the request as well to make sure this wasn't a joke, because really, why would Fons and Porter care about my opinion, of all bloggers everywhere? I still don't know why they asked, but I'm flattered and honored and here we go!

I'm not a traditional quilter per se, but I've made my share of log cabins. That is if you can call two quilts in 17 years "my share". Both have been the result of group log cabin projects with my guild, so really, while I ended up with two quilts I've actually worked on about a dozen others along the way. I'm no Abe Lincoln, but I've stacked my share of logs, if you will.

I can honestly say that had I had this little book in hand before working on those projects, things might have gone a lot more smoothly. I might have been able to eek out several more inches from some fabrics that I didn't QUITE have enough of if I had known how long to cut the logs for each round rather than just chain piecing strips and praying I would have enough. I might have considered some more scrappy looks for my own blocks, because some of the photos are just so mouthwatering in this book. And I most definitely would not have been so terrified of such a seemingly simple block the first time out, because right there on page three the entire log cabin process is broken down into six easy steps, which really are all any quilter should need to feel confident going in. If building a traditional, fairly basic log cabin quilt is what you are after, you can't go wrong with the charts and simple instructions contained on the first few pages.

As many of you regular readers know, I am a bit of history geek, and I have to say the addition to this little book of sidebar trivia snippets and photos of several actual historical log cabin quilts owned by Sara Miller, with whom I need to go antiquing someday, was a great treat. I did know that the centers of the block represented a hearth or a window depending on the color of the fabric used, but I did not previously know that in the 19th century, these blocks were foundation pieced, and therefore many of them ended up tied due to the extra thickness. It's history geeky fascinating.

Despite the historical and traditional nature of the log cabin, "Build Your Best Log Cabin" snazzies up the basic block and modernizes a few of the derivations (Traditional, Courthouse Steps, and Chevron) with some really gorgeous interpretations complete with directions for making all of them. Ricky Tims has an offering combining a bear paw with traditional log cabin in colors that will just make you smile. Shon McMain offers up an electric rainbow of happy with a really cool interpretation of the courthouse steps block, while Lori Christianson modernizes the courthouse and sends it to the islands with some amazing batiks. Finally, Marti Mitchell's "Linked Chevrons" in a crib quilt size is a really cool way to make the simple block look much more complicated with fabric placement.  

My favorite part of the book, though, has to be the bonuses. I mean really, who doesn't love bonus material, whether it's outtakes on the DVD of a movie you just watched or your favorite LQS getting generous with their cutting? Included in "Build Your Best Log Cabin" are instructions for plenty of life skills quilters should check out, like bobbin quilting and using piping on a binding. There's even a tutorial on lump-free binding that I tried out. My review-within-a-review of that - if you have no continuous binding technique that you are currently using, it is well worth learning. As many of you who have heard my tale of woe regarding what the judges said about my really cool scrap quilt that everyone else who ever sees it completely loves but they thought the binding sucked knows, a good continuous binding technique that works for you is a must, and this one may work for you.

Perhaps you are now intrigued and cannot wait to download your copy of this cool free book. Perhaps you too are trying to determine why F&P cared what I thought. Either way, you can get your copy easily enough. So go forth and hew some logs!

UFOapalooza and the blog hop winner!

In the wake of the events of last Friday, I want to extend my thoughts, prayers, and love to the families of the victims. A friend of mine put it best when she said she felt like we were in the wake of 9/11 all over again, so senseless and horrible was the crime, and so far reaching the sorrow. We all feel like we want to do something to help, but there is a profound helplessness in knowing there isn't anything we can do to fix it. It's hard for me to know if it is okay to go on being amusing on a quilting blog when the world has thrown this at us and my heart is aching. However, it is part of what I do, and I hope I can make someone smile and forget for a little while the reality of what we have been through. Please know that  I may appear to be back to business as usual, but I promise you that as the mom of a Kindergartener whose three kids go to a K-4 school less than 200 miles from this horrible incident, I have been rocked by this as much as any of us and the victims' families are in my constant thoughts.
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Hoe. Lee. Cow.

Hotties, you have outdone yourselves and the quilting industry and thrown my day into utter shock and awe. You have also proven my theory that quilters suffer from a very special form of ADHD, much like the kind the dog in "Up" seems to have, where we will be working along on a project but see something even prettier and yell "Quilt!", toss the current project aside, and off we go to the fabric shop to start a new project.

It turns out I way underestimated you. So let's break it down.

Number of quilters who took time to comment and respond to my "How many UFOs do you have?" query:  130

Total UFOs actually admitted to: 1885

Mean number of UFOs per quilter:  14.5

Median: I have better things to do than list all of the answers in order, so who knows.

Mode: 20-25






High: 80

Low: 2 (of those who admitted to any at all)

Number who refused to admit to how many they have, for fear we would all show up at their door with pitchforks and flaming torches, apparently: 4.

Number who claim to have zero, but I am not sure I believe them: 2.

Number who don't count pieced and quilted, yet unbound and therefore not finished, quilts as UFOs - 3.

Number of bloggers who write this blog who do: 1, therefore in the grand total, the "done but unbound" were counted.

Number who confess to having UFOs in three different states: 1.

Number who "just started quilting in October, so I had to look up what a UFO was": 1.

Number of UFOs the newbie October quilter already has: 3.

Number of quilters who have some sort of UFO accounting system: 6

Number of years one commenter has been wrapping the same UFO Christmas tree skirt around her tree trunk: 10.

Number of UFOs I have, because it is only fair that I out myself as well: 17.

Number of current UFOs I anticipate will get done at some point in my lifetime: Maybe 6.

Number of commenters who need to join DaGMT: 130. See you in February, but also hopefully sooner.


I truly loved this thread and will be sad to see it end. But before it does, there is one more number you have all been waiting for, and that is the winning number.

43

Which translates to Connie of "Freemotion by the River" blog fame. Connie admits to "at least 50" UFOs but caveats, as if we might take them all away if she doesn't have a good excuse for so many, with "most of them are not full sized quilts."  She hopes to finish an Irish Chain soon, but I feel certain that the second she opens her prize package from me another UFO will bite the dust, if only temporarily.

Congratulations Connie! 

Quilting Gallery turns 5, you get 6 fabrics

The Quilting Gallery is celebrating the big 0-5 this week, and we bloglanders are all coming together to shower YOU with gifts. First you receive the gift of discovering my blog. A gift which will truly keep on giving should you return, and if you ask me, you should definitely return. I have some fantastic new events coming up in 2013, kicking right off in January with a new group quilt project followed by "Drop and Give Me Twenty", the web's biggest UFO busting blog event as proclaimed by me. If you have even one UFO in your pile you'll want to check out the details. If you have only one UFO, though, it is debatable if you can consider yourself a real quilter, you know, so get to sewing! It is our duty as quilters to leave piles of fabric and half finished quilts for our children and grandchildren to find homes for someday.

And if that is not enough for you, you might even win my prize, a set of six 1/3 yard cuts of these yummers Christmas fabrics from Northcott's Stonehenge line.

Aren't they delish? I used them in the cover quilt for a pattern I am working on and they feel as good as they look. I can barely part with some of these leftovers, but for the sake of you and your happiness, I will brush away a tear as I ship them off to lands unknown. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

To enter, please sign up to be a follower of Quilting Hottie Haven and then tell me in a comment on this post how many UFOs you currently have in your stash (approximate number is fine, I am not about to ask you to actually count and even if I did, how would I know you actually did it? It's all in the name of trust, hotties. But I will say if you tell me you have 50 or more I might be skeptical that you padded it a tad.), and which one you would most like to finish in the near future. And by near future I mean "before you go to the great quilt studio in the sky".

Good luck, and happy blog hopping!

Edited to add: Holy flipping UFOage, hotties! I no longer think you are padding it at close to 50 since there are so many of you in that category, but I do think quilters seem to suffer from a very specific form of ADHD wherein we must start three projects while in the process of working on one. Yet another reason to join us in February! 

Perhaps it is time to join JA

And by JA, I of course mean Jewel-iters Anonymous.

You know it has gotten bad when you hear a crash, and your children immediately yell "MOM! Get the Jewel-it!"

In this season of light, love, and myriad breakable decor, the Jewel-it has been pressed into service and performed very admirably on many such an occasion. Observe.

This is the top of the Christmas cookie jar. Admittedly, it is hideous, and needs to be replaced. But it cost me $2.99 back in 1996 and I really don't want to get rid of it until I've gotten my money's worth. So when it fell on the counter and broke the other day, it was JI to the rescue! 

This poor little mermaid. Not only are her boobs unnaturally close together, perhaps to balance out how wide apart her eyes are placed, but last year she lost an arm in a freak shark attack, and this year Eva touched her inappropriately and she fell off the tree and was decapitated. But can you tell now? No, you can't. #JIrules.

 Besides repairing all manner of things this season, I've also taken advantage of the fact that we are enjoying the only stretch of four weeks in a row wherein there are no vacation or half days of school for the entire year - I'd say don't get me started, but clearly it is too late - and I've been very productive on a new pattern. As per ushe, I'll release a Christmas pattern at totally the wrong time of year (February), but hey, at least I'm in the spirit while I sew. A snippet.

Have you noticed the new button on the top of the right column? The DaGMT page is up and running, hotties! The observant among you might note the background is eerily familiar somehow.

You can't sign up yet to participate - that will open on 1/15, but you CAN check out all of the fantastic prizes from my amazing sponsors and start mentally preparing for how phenomenal it is all going to be. I also won't stop you from putting the button on your own blog yet, and when you do so be sure to comment so that I know you already earned a point toward the prizes! I'm adding more prizes as they come in, and will accept them until 1/15, so if you'd like to be a sponsor please let me know.

Christmas Delights of the Furry Kind

It's that time of year again. We've decked the halls after the annual discussion of white vs colored lights on the tree, the girls are bouncing off the walls with Christmas joy, we're trying new cookie recipes, shopping, wrapping, making general merriment, and oh yeah, hosting our yearly rodent invasion.

Yep. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas indeed.

Just about every fall, we get a mouse or 87 in the house. It is icky, and maybe I should be completely horrified, but I am assuming that we're not alone because if we were there wouldn't be an entire industry devoted to extermination and a whole aisle of traps at the hardware store. It's New England. We're overrun with field mice. As long as they stay out of my pajama pants, which on the fateful day of October 10, 2011 was not the case, I'm good with setting the traps and listening for the sweet sound of a great big SNAP-aroo, and calling in the husband to deal with the corpse.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the family Helfter is also now and again plagued by a rodent of another kind at Christmastide. By the amazing amount of images available when one googles "Squirrel in Santa hat", I'm guessing we may not be alone in that either. But I bet we have the best stories, so I'm about to tell them.

"Santa Squirrel 1: Shimmy Down the Chimney"

It was 1995, the first Christmas we were married. Joe and I returned home from Christmas Eve services and things were amiss. Several pictures were askew on the walls. The toilet paper roll was unwound. Several ornaments were on the floor under the tree. I thought we had been broken into, but my wallet was sitting on the kitchen counter untouched. It was then we noticed the ashy little footprints all over the kitchen counter.

Yes. A squirrel came down our chimney on Christmas Eve. We just can't make this stuff up.

We tried to find it, but squirrels are remarkably adept at hiding when they see angry people wielding brooms and trying to kill them. So since we were leaving in the morning for 4 days in Minnesota, we called the landlord to let him know he'd have to come deal with a squirrel in the house.

His reaction could not have been less enthused, less concerned, or more asinine, telling us it was probably out already ("How do you figure?" we asked. "It walked out the door when you came in," he said. See. Asinine.) But he promised to come by the next day to check it out. We somehow managed to sleep in the place with a squirrel in it, lurking, ready to pounce.

We returned five days later to a neighbor telling us they had seen a squirrel in the picture window a few days ago. Fantastic. Upon entering the house, we found the sliding glass door open wide, more ornaments knocked off, dirty footprints all over the furniture, poop EVERYWHERE, and perhaps the most insulting to me as a quilter, a half-eaten bagel on my sewing machine.

Another call to the landlord, telling him he was going to pay for a professional cleaning (he did), and asking what exactly he had done to deal with the squirrel in our absence. The answer: "Well, I came over yesterday (YESTERDAY! FOUR DAYS AFTER WE TOLD HIM WE HAD A SQUIRREL IN THE HOUSE!) after your neighbor called me and I opened the back door so he could walk out." And left it open 24 hours so that anything else could walk in, including vagrants and thieves? "Um.......yeah." Again, asinine.

We moved eventually, but looking back on it, we should have just opened the door and walked out earlier.Or maybe left some poop behind.

Which brings us to 2012, "Santa Squirrel 2: Gettin' Nuttin' For Christmas"

When we added our family room and redesigned our roofline several years ago, the builder, whom I am convinced was a first degree relative of our former landlord, left a 12" x 18"ish opening in the wall between our garage attic and our house attic. We never got a good answer as to why, and he never did come back to fill it in even though he promised to do so. Said opening will now and then allow a squirrel to get in via the garage attic, and we will be treated to the dulcet tones of a squirrel pretending to be a bowling ball and propelling himself across the floor and into walls all night long until we can trap the damn thing and let him out.

It is delightful.

This year, we got an even bigger delight.

Yes. A squirrel family. And this time they are taking over.


A few days ago I was in the process of returning the tree ornament bin to the attic, and my hand slipped as I was turning the attic door knob. Or so I thought. I tried again and discovered that for the first time in the 14 years we have lived here, I was locked out of the attic. Joe was away visiting his parents in MN, and I got a little freaked out. Our phone conversation:

Me: Um, I was trying to go up to the attic and the door is locked from the other side.

Joe: Huh?

Me: Locked. From the other side.

Joe: It has a lock?

Me: I guess. Or maybe someone is in there holding the door shut. (I actually sort of believed this was happening because I get freaked out like that when he goes away sometimes.)

Joe: It would have to be an elf. I don't think you have to worry about an elf. (He did not say, but I heard in his voice "Because you could just get the fishing net and catch him and make him make you toys. OMG who is this woman I am married to?")

Me: Okay, well then, do you think the SQUIRRELS did it?

Joe: <pause> <pause> Do you? Could they? OMG, I think maybe.....

So yes, for lack of a better explanation, we are pretty certain that a squirrel throwing itself against the door, which also would explain a large bang I heard a day or so before this discovery, accidentally locked the door, locking us out of our own attic unless and until we can hire an elf to crawl through the hole and let us, and several traps, back in.

Meanwhile, the party continues unabated up there.

May your days be merry, bright, and rodent-free this holiday season. Chances are good for you though, since they are all over here at my place.