QH and her amazing technicolor vacuum

So I was doing a little housecleaning on Saturday (try not to die of shock) when I noticed the vacuum was not sucking. Normally not sucking is a positive thing in life, but I think we can all agree that vacuums are the one exception. I announced to my husband that I was going to take apart the vacuum and see where it was clogged. Mr. Quilting Hottie, being equally techno and electronically challenged as myself, didn't even attempt to wrestle the screwdriver out of my hand, but instead started looking at new vacuums on Amazon while I went off to tame the beast.

I never did find a clog. But I did find this, and it was a reminder to me how colorful the lives of quilters are, right down to their cleaning implements.




Yes, it does show that I do not take care of my vacuum as I should, and therefore it likely will never recover. But in a weird way it was a little bit pretty. And how many other hobbies can live on in your vacuum brush like sewing and quilting?



On another note, have you officially committed to partaking in "Drop and Give Me Twenty" yet? Or are you just going to be content to sit back and watch as the rest of us try to out-UFO each other? The fun starts Wednesday, February 1 and goes through the 29th. Sign up by commenting on this post: http://www.evapaigequiltdesigns.blogspot.com/2012/01/drop-and-give-me-twenty-minutes-that-is.html. You know can only feel better about yourself and your UFO pile if you do it!

Drop and Give Me Twenty! Minutes, that is....

Announcing my first ever Quilt-A-Long on Quilting Hottie Haven - "Drop and Give Me Twenty!" No, I have not secured the services of Jillian Michaels to come in your homes to force you to do push ups, because I like you and that would just be mean.

"Drop and Give me Twenty!" was created by me last night while I was wearing my penguin jammies and contemplating how I might possibly get about 5 pending projects (what I like to call UFOs because it makes them sound like maybe there is a prayer of them being finished at some point) done over the course of the next month or so. In going through my pending project stash, it occured to me that I may not be the only one with upwards of 10 pending projects that need some attention, and I decided to put out a challenge to myself and invite you all to participate. That's the power of the penguin jammies.

I've long preached that if you devote just twenty minutes a day to your quilting, you will be amazed at how quickly your projects come together, but must admit that sometimes even I fall off the twenty minute wagon. But think about it. Twenty minutes a day equals two hours and twenty minutes a week. Two hours and twenty minutes a week equals close to 140 hours in a year. If you spend about 12 hours per quilt (probably my average), that's over 10 in a year! Just from twenty minutes a day! OMG! I can't stop using exclamation points over the brilliance of my deductions! And my math skills!

At the moment though, in order to get the necessary quilts finished for my new trunk show, I need to devote well over twenty minutes a day to my machine over the next month, but I realize I can't ask you to do the same just because I've been a slacker. That's why I'm sticking with 20 minutes for the QAL. To me this seems to come at a perfect time, though - it's February, which is a dull month for the most part and I am certain you all have nothing better to do than join me in this venture, and it's also a short month, so we will be cheating right off the bat. Awesome.

So here are the rules:

1. Fill in the blank "I, (insert name here), pledge to quilt for (number of hours, minutes, seconds, specific time of day like 'while the baby naps/kids play Just Dance 2 on Wii/I am supposed to be making dinner', etc) for the entire month of February because Beth told me I had to/I have nothing better to do/I don't want to leave my children with 457 pending projects/etc."

2. Grab a button if you like from the top of the sidebar, and place it on your blog, FB page, or wherever, to show the world that you have committed to this challenge you are creating for yourself. Note: Because I have no computer skilz, the blog button will not link unless you create a link for it. www.evapaigequiltdesigns.blogspot.com should suffice, but is not necessary. Again, I don't need you to suffer due to my mad lack of skills.

3. Tell us about your progress! Post photos on your FB page, post them on my EPQD one, blog about it, post comments here whatever! I not only plan to quilt every day of February, but also plan to blog about my progress every day of February. And yes, I also plan to have my head examined at some point in February.

I'm excited and I hope you'll join me. Together we can be models of quilting hottie productiveness for all slacker quilters everywhere.

When the fabrics won't just shut up already

Last week I received in the mail a package that made me extremely happy on so many levels. It was soft, it was snuggly (What? You don't snuggle your mail?), it arrived just as I was ready for a new project, and when I opened it up, it was so much more beautiful than I ever anticipated.

It's the "Dreaming in French" collection by Art Gallery Fabrics, and anyone who knows me is looking at these and saying "Yes, the only more perfect name for this line of fabric would be 'Quilting Hottie Goes to Paris'." It is just that perfectly me. I'm a bright girl. I'm a purple girl, with a little lime and pink thrown in. I love big prints, wild patterns, and crazy color combinations that just work. I can't stand ditsy dots or bitsy bows or anything in the reproduction vein, and I break out in hives from plaids or checks. So these pretty much screamed at me "YOU MUST CUT US AND YOU MUST DO IT RIGHT NOW!"

So cut them I did on Saturday, and in between stopping every few minutes to let one of my fellow open-sew-ers touch them because they were so soft (see? cuddly.) and pass around the Art Gallery catalog, I started throwing them together in a pretty simple design that would maximize the fabric gorgeousness. Or so I thought.

Last night I gave it up and gave in to my tendency to need to make things more interesting by slashing here and there, and I am loving the result. I'll give you an extreme close up of my still fairly simple, but much more interesting design as of this morning.

Okay, so the photo doesn't look all that interesting, but trust me, if you could see the whole thing it would be much more exciting. I know I am close to pant-wetting state myself, but I can see the whole thing. You will have to wait for a bigger reveal. I'm such a tease.

If Nascar had a quilting race, I know who would win

I also know I wouldn't watch it because I don't enjoy Nascar, but whatever.

Did any of you have visions of being the first to get your Scrappy New Year blocks back to me? Give up the dream. As predicted, Angie Callbeck of trash barrel diving fame from the previous post has won. As usual, and much to the chagrin of Judy "Speed Demon" Damon, who will have to settle for some other number this time. We love Angie, but really, it's like you almost have to get up last month to beat her at anything quilting related.

I went to my guild's open sew on Saturday, whereupon Angie handed me her four blocks, which she had made the night before. Many of you may be saying "What??? I didn't even get my directions until Saturday afternoon! Cheater!" but let me assure you that no, she isn't alone in cheating. I gave her the directions early at her request, thereby becoming the enabler that I love to be so that I may then turn around and give her crap for being the first one done. I'm a fantastic friend.

But aren't they cute? Minus the fact that they look like I threw them in the bottom of my bag and forgot to take them out until today (no comment)? Nothing a little iron won't fix and I am so excited to have more come my way soon! There is nothing like the thrill of getting the mail when I am running a group project, and it has nothing to do with the hotness or lack thereof of my current mailman.

I was so excited to be overwhelmed by responses from quilters who wanted to participate. I should have enough blocks for two quilts! It isn't too late for you to throw your scraps in the ring too - just let me know and I can get the pdf to you asap.

Scrappy New Year! New Group Quilt needs you!

*********UPDATE 3/3/15**********

WELCOME TO ALL PINTEREST PEEPS! It has come to my attention that this block is all of a sudden very popular over there - which I LOVE! I've received a lot of requests for the pdf and I've finally figured out where it was coming from. Sometimes it takes me a day or two. Anyway, please note that while you are welcome to read all about this block and how it started life as one of my group projects, the project ended three years ago and resulted in "Kickin' Stash," my most popular pattern ever designed and still going strong - in fact, it was recently picked up by Checker. If you'd like the pdf of the pattern, it can be found for instant download on Craftsy and Patternspot.  However I am no longer giving away pdfs of the block as that was just for the group project and testing period in early 2012. Thank you so much for your interest and while this has been a bit of a crazy mystery for me over the last few days, it's been kind of awesome too! I hope you'll check it out!

Original post:

It's that time of year again. The time when I look at my overflowing boxes of scraps and think "Really, I need to get a handle on this situation, and while I'm at it I probably should make a new scrap quilt" and then seven minutes later I see something shiny on the other side of the room and thoughts of a new scrap quilt have vanished for another year. Granted, I know you are looking at that photo and saying "She calls THAT a scrap problem??? I can't even shut the door of my studio closet because I have 16 trash bags full of them/My husband has threatened to start using my scraps as oil rags because they have taken over the half bath/The Red Cross called me last week because they heard I could supply them with bandage rolls until 2037/What-evah, girl!", but yeah, I call it a scrap problem. Don't judge my scraps, I won't judge yours. I admit I don't tend to save pieces that other people consider scraps, say anything under 8" square, and have been known to stand idly by watch my friend Angie Callbeck trash barrel dive for my discards at quilt retreats and then pretend to be properly remorseful while she and others to chide me about throwing away perfectly good 4" pieces of fabric, promising never to do it again while crossing my fingers behind my back. Maybe this will be the year I finally do the kind thing and just hand them over to her rather than make her go into the trash for them. But I digress. Yes, I do find these scraps to be a problem, few as they may seem.

But hotties, let us mark 2012 on the calendar as The Year I Finally Did Something About My Scraps. And you get to help me.

I've played around with EQ and drawn a block that I really sort of like for numerous reasons, but the main ones are thus:

• It is pretty simple
• It doesn't have matching points
• It looks cool in a lot of different settings
• and most importantly, I have a prayer of getting rid of at least a few scraps

So in the interest of combining my scrap reduction with a new group quilt, let this serve as the official announcement - Scrappy New Year Group Project is ON!
Some of you may have participated in my group projects before, so you know I'm pretty easy going when it comes to running them. In 2008 I did a version of Syncopated Ribbons with 16 people participating, including an 8 year old boy and 10 year old girl, and it went on to become my cover photo for that particular pattern and is a stunner wherever it goes.

Last winter I ran my infamous Diamond Dazzle group project, wherein I almost lost my mind trying to reason with computerized design, but the actual group project part was great fun. Over 20 quilters participated in that group quilt, and while I got to use the prototype as my cover quilt for the pattern again, everyone who participated received enough blocks in return to make a table runner or baby quilt.
SNY will be the third group project of this type I have run, and I'm happy to say I've already got several people signed on who are threepeats themselves, so it must be at least a little bit fun, right? Are you chomping at the bit to get started yet? Let's get back to that block I showed earlier and tell you what we're going to do with it.
Here's the actual, real, fabric block I made.

It took me about 40 minutes start to finish, including time to locate proper fabrics, becoming distracted by many other pretty ones, cutting the pieces, winding a bobbin, breaking a thread, and an iron that I forgot to plug in. So in a perfect world, it would take 22 minutes or so.
Note that like the drawn block above, it has a white background and four fabrics from the same color family, in my case lime green. That's what we're going for this time. White background, four fabrics from the same color family. It's that simple. I am not going to tell you what color family to choose - that is up to you, and how you choose it can be as simple and scientific as seeing which of your bins is most overflowing (my method of choice), or asking everyone you know what their favorite color is, charting all the answers on a bar graph, and then throwing the bar graph out and choosing your own favorite color. Any color family will do. Really, I cannot stress enough how little I care which color family you choose.
You will make four blocks using directions I will provide to you. All four blocks can be made of the same fabrics and/or be from the same color family, or you can make four completely different blocks. Again, my apathy on how you choose to proceed with that is stunning. One of these blocks I will keep to include in the group quilt I will put together, the other three will be shuffled about and you will receive three blocks back, all made by other quilters. Kind of like a mini BOM. You can either make a few more blocks and whip up a baby quilt with a group flair, or make them into pillows, or use them as handkerchiefs or dishrags - again, I cannot stress how little I care what you actually do with them when you get them back - they are YOUR blocks, so YOUR choice! Each participant will also receive a Quilting Hottie button to prove to the world that they are awesome, and, if they so choose, will be allowed to borrow both the finished group quilt and myself for a half price "Plays Well With Others" group quiltmaking lecture for their guild anytime in the next few years, but is under no obligation whatsoever to do so. Just an offer I'm putting out there because I know this quilt will be beautiful and will want to be seen.
I anticipate wanting all the blocks in the mail to me postmarked by 2/8/12. If this is a good time frame for you and you are at all intrigued, I hope to hear from you!
Potential participants, please contact me directly at evapaigequilts@charter.net and I will email you the pdf of directions. Like all my group projects, I know this one will be a blast.

Step Back, Lawrence Welk

So Saturday morning I met my friend Michelle Banton, she of "biggish font over there on my Cloud thingy" fame, to do an exchange of a quilt she had quilted for me on her new long arm for a check and a hug. Despite the fact that she can now deposit money into her account, which is always a good thing, I still think I got the better end of the deal.

I can't show you much of this quilt at all as it is tentatively contracted to a publication, but I do want to show an extreme close up as so you can see what a fabulous job Michelle did on her very first computerized design.



Yes, you read that right. Her first computerized design. Many people would hear that and politely take their quilt elsewhere, but not me. I'm the type who will make a brand new gourmet recipe for the very first time when expecting 8 dinner guests, so handing over an important project to a newbie wasn't a huge deal to me. Call me a risk taker. Plus as a winner of the "My HQ Story" last fall, I knew Michelle had had lots of lessons and a rolladex full of contacts to help her along the way. Because Michelle quilts in 1986, after all.

I knew I wanted circles of some sort on the pattern, and that was something I would never be able to do on my own. Michelle admitted she couldn't do it on her own either, and that is why she suggested using the computerized design. The one we chose was called "Bubbles" and was completely perfect for the pattern design.

This is not to say there were not moments of panic along the way for both of us. Michelle's first attempt at downloading her "Bubbles" program resulted in a day of frustration for her until she called the company and was told that she must have gotten a corrupt file. Then she had to figure out how to tweak the design to fit my quilt size (remember, she's never done this before). I saw all this on her FB status and started to panic that she was going to give it back to me and tell me I was causing too much trouble and I had to do it myself. I had no idea how to quilt the thing on my own, so this was a serious fear as I saw the deadline approaching. But I said a little prayer rather than panicking, reasserted my full trust in Michelle, and although we were down to the wire, we did it, and it is gorgeous.

Many thanks to all the people who helped Michelle along the way as she did an amazing job on it! Again, I am sorry I can't reveal any more about it than this for now, but stay tuned and all will be revealed in time. I promise.

Visions of summer picnics ahead

Regular readers will recall that summer is not my favorite season. The heat. The bugs. The constant packing up of towels, snacks, goggles, etc for an afternoon at the pool, to be closely followed by an evening of unpacking a variety of empty snack wrappings and wet towels. Packing for day or overnight trips almost every weekend, wherein I as the mom get to make sure all bills are paid; everyone's laundry is clean; supervise packing for three young girls who remember their DS games but forget their actual clothes (yes, this has happened); be sure we have all accoutrements for wherever we may be going which may or may not be limited to food for a week, bicycles, scooters, 765 floaties, air mattresses, air pump, sleeping bags or other bedding, enough towels for 10, projects and books for everyone, and Smore making supplies; load it all in the car along with the children after having set up the video system and have the husband stroll in 15 minutes before we leave, throw his bag in the back and say "Wow. We did a great job packing and we're only 10 minutes off schedule." Operative word: We. Operative level of annoyance: High.

But I am not bitter. He's lucky to be cute and he does do most of the cooking at the lake.

Anyway, even in midst the deepest cold we've seen thusfar this winter, I must turn my thoughts to summer, because I am participating in Becky from Patchwork Posse's latest Round Robin adventure, which this year has the theme of "Summer Picnic". So I must start thinking of ideas for my row which do not involve heaps of laundry, attack bees swarming my daughter, sweating off 10 pounds a day during heat waves, or the words "I'm bored." Hmmm......maybe gin and tonics. It's all I've got at the moment.

I participated in Becky's round robin last year, and the result is just about to be quilted. This means, of course, that it has been hanging on one of the ladders in my sewing studio buried under several other UFOs for almost a year. But yeah, it's time to quilt it. I'm thinking of adding another of the top and bottom borders (which also happened to be my contribution to the project) to the sides. What do we think?

The new project starts January 13 and goes to May. Lots of awesome designers will be participating, and dreams of summer will dance in your heads. Or give you nightmares, as the case may be. Check it out at www.patchworkposse.com/blog! Hope to have you participate!

Lessons of 2011

My friend Michelle Banton, who was a guest blogger here a few months ago, recently posed this question to our quilt guild "What 5-10 things did you learn in 2011?" Unfortunately, the response to her question from guild members was rather pitiful, but I thought it was a fantastic exercise in "The Year's Important Lessons in Review", and I would like to restate my list here. Some editing has occured because none of you care to listen to me remind people to bring food to our meeting this evening. I can make anything work in a list.

1. Yes, I CAN quilt with variegated threads. They don't hate me like I thought they did for so long. Metallics, however, are the spawn of the devil.
Check it out! No breakage! And the stitching isn't bad either, if I do say.


2. Yes, I CAN match points. I just don't normally choose to.
Wow! Watch out! One could get a pretty deep cut on that point!

The block right next to it is more my style.


3. Having a tired, hungry, dress-rehearsaled out 8 year old in the backseat at 9:30pm is the best way to avoid a speeding ticket when caught going 45 in a 25.

4. Said 8 year old cannot remotely keep a juicy secret like "Mom just got pulled over" from Daddy.

5. EQ7 is fun, but still not totally my style and I still feel like I am cheating.

6. You can't lose through the attempt. It's how you react to the result, whatever that may be, that makes you grow.

7. My "Twenty Minutes a Day" rule is the most brilliant by far of any I have ever created. A close second is "In Our House, We Do Not Lick Our Sisters."

8. Nothing makes me cry more than Greta asking how far away heaven is because she wants to hug Angel Grandma just once. I know it sounds crazy, but this kid has always had a real relationship with my mom, who died 4 years before she was born. It's an indescribable thing, but one of the most peaceful things I know. It's brought my beliefs in God to a whole new level.

9. Car mechanics may mean well, but I truly believe they do not take women seriously, and therefore we must pull out our inner bitch when necessary. After 18 months, 7 visits to the shop, and 3 attempts to fix my car by replacing the exact same sensor three times, my car was finally fixed when someone heaved a great sigh in my general direction and said "Okay, I will bite. What do YOU (implied in the tone was that "lowly woman" should be inserted here) think it is?" Then they hated every second of having to admit I was right. I will never allow mechanics to brush me off again. And next time my Japanese flag will remain firmly planted on the front lawn until my husband gets the notion of another American-engineered car out of his head.

10. The word No is very powerful. Use it sparingly.