Awareness Bribery and FB giveaway

May 8, 2013 is the first annual "World Ovarian Cancer Day", and I've spent several weeks trying to figure out a way EPQD could take part. What with all the pre-Market craziness of the last few months, many of the bigger ideas I had, like a blog party with official buttons and linkies, or a swap party, or some such thing that would take way more time and energy than I currently have, have had to be put on hold until next time. So we are falling back to the quickest and easiest event - a giveaway including bribery leading to a donation. Awesome.

 Whatever it takes, though, to make you hotties aware. As many of you know, my mom died of PPOC 11 years ago. She was 59 and in the prime of early retirement, which is exactly when it strikes the majority of women. That's really close to the average age of quilters, huh? Scary for many reasons, but let's add in all those prime quilting years taken away and it becomes even sadder. So please, if you do nothing more this month, check out the WOCD site (the graphic under Fact 2 of "Five Facts...." is particularly telling as to the deadliness of this disease) and make yourselves aware. I can't afford to lose my peeps!

So here's the giveaway and the deal.

Yes, that does say "Modern Family" on the polish. The color is "Candid Cameron." "I'll Phil for You" is also lovely, but didn't work for this giveaway.

This is a giveaway confined to my FB page. It is where I wax poetic M-F in a quick "Morning Meeting/Morning Tea Break" sort of way by sharing something silly, interesting, or hopefully inspiring, and finding out what you are up to as well. I love the community I have built there and I hope if you are not a member, you might consider joining. If not, I totally understand as FB is not for everyone, and I am thrilled you are part of the QHH community.


Between now and May 8 share the top post or become a new liker on the page and you are entered.  I'll also be donating $1 to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (up to $100 - I can dream) for every new FB liker between now and May 8. Honestly, I will be thrilled to give them $1, as every little bit helps.

 But most importantly, become aware. I don't just want you for the numbers, I want you for your spirit, advice, inspiration, and community, and I won't let this disease have you!

Market Mash-Up

Wow - it's really been almost three weeks since I had a chance to sit down and do a blog post. That is what happens when one goes on vacation four weeks before Market, like a complete idiot, and said vacation turns into a bit of a people version of that movie "Homeward Bound" where the dogs try to find their way across California. In this version, my family of five became trapped in Chicago/en route home for three extra days of a week long trip when we chose to spend spring break in Chicago the same week of the Boston bombings and a 36 hour melee of Midwest weather and flooding that together made it next to impossible to fly between the two cities. So that was fun.

The part of the grumpy cat was alternately played by me and Mr. QH, depending on what the airlines had to tell us at any given moment.

 

There was more than one moment where I wished people really could fly.

 In all seriousness though, I am thankful this was the only "bad" thing that happened to my family last week, as I know plenty of victims of the marathon bombings would be thrilled to have had our trials and tribulations. My thoughts are with all of them as we all struggle to make sense of random evil in our world. I am proud to call Boston home and am glad the world has seen that we really are a people full of heart. Or haaaht. Either way, you have to admit we totally rock a National Anthem.

Since we had arranged for the post office to start delivering our mail again on Thursday, but didn't get home until Sunday evening, I must take this moment to thank the 11 year old girl across the street for bringing us three loads of mail via her bike and backpack like an adjunct member of the USPS last night. Most exciting to me was a parcel containing this fabric from Art Gallery:

I. Love. Them. And Art Gallery as they are the nicest people ever.

 I have actually already whipped them into most of a quilt top today. I needed a smaller version of "Garden's Gate" for my booth at Market, as it is the smallest booth one can get (ie "Barbie's Dream Booth"), so this one will be gorgeous and modern and not take up an entire wall.

Look at me go. It's more fun than laundry, after all.

 In other mail news, I also received two enormous boxes from Smartpress.com, my favorite printers, and I now officially have all of my patterns in paper form and after a stuffing festival of immense proportions this evening, I will be ready to ship all the paper products to my Portland hotel. Yay! Checking things off the list!

All I can say is Castle better be good tonight to alleviate the horror of stuffing 9 million patterns.

Having now exhausted the theme of what I got in the real mail while I was gone, let's move on to the ever popular topic of "What I got in my email that was exciting and Market related" today.

1. Room C121, 1:55pm on May 16. Be there for my Schoolhouse Presentation "Kickin' Stash and Taking Names." Woo hoo!
2. This cool badge so I can post it on things (like my blog, my FB page, and even I suppose my forehead if I wanted to) and remind everyone of my commitment to twice in a month fly across America and hope to God I make it home again, as apparently this is no longer a given when flying in 2013.

It's quite official, no?

  3. And just now, while I was madly typing away, Market Slave East Renae Mathe sent me a photo of the new Sunflower and Sky sample I begged her to make for me out of a pile of purple and yellow batiks I handed her at school pickup one day. Squeee! Moral of the story - don't offer to help me or you will get a job.

She claims it is better in person, which I am sure it is, but I am loving it even now. In large part because I didn't have to make it.

Did I make my mail sound as exciting as yours? One can hope.

More Market Prep and Necessary Diversions From Market Prep

It's way fun around here as my family watches me turn into more of a crazed lunatic than usual and wonders why I keep forgetting to make dinner. To them I say "Thank God for Stop and Shop pickup service or you might not even have food in the house, so enough with the whining and eat a cheese stick."

Yes, the countdown to May 21, when Mom is back from Market and this person who can't stop worrying about steel, drapes, floor mats, shipping, signage, drayage, postage, and bank account balance-age goes back to wherever she came from.

It's been a long road, but I have finished all the writing and layout for the last of my Market debut and Market rewrite/refresh patterns, and a print order the size of which is about to give me heart failure is going out today. You are welcome, Smartpress.com. The office party is on me.

I am thrilled to report that "Taking Names" is one of the patterns I have finally finished. Those of you who visit my FB page now and then may have seen it already, but for those who don't, feast your eyes.

 

I am so happy with how it came out; being both a group project AND a scrappy triangle block, there was a fair amount of trying to figure out how to get everyone's blocks the same size during the testing process, but in the end it really became a stunner. The block size stuff got ironed out too, have no fear. Many testers/group participants loved making the block so much they just kept going and making more and more, and I really hope I get to see photos of them all soon.

Every participant had their own special color scheme for the blocks everyone else was making for them. As you can tell, unless color blindness has set in and if so WOW you are awesome for still being a quilter, my theme was black and white scraps with a lime background. Here are a few other color schemes chosen:

Anna D. chose b/w and yellow. It kinda makes me wish I still had my varsity jacket from high school.

Kelli F. chose totally scrappy with mint green background. You really can't get more fun, or simple, than that.

Kelli's blocks that I actually made. I believe some of these scraps are still all over my studio floor.

Glen P. wanted shades of grey to go with her orange background. She was the most challenging to us all, as very few quilters have many greys beyond in their hair. But the blocks turned out pretty cool!

"Taking Names" is finally available for download on Craftsy and Patternspot and will make its print debut in Portland. I hope you'll try it and show me your creations!

I did mention that there were some issues with consistent size of triangles among the participants, right? While in the end I had plenty of triangles to use for my cover quilt, I did end up with several that were just too small. This led to a big fix in the pattern, and I am forever grateful to my testers because without them we wouldn't have gotten it right. It also lead to my having 20 extra blocks, which lead to the brilliant idea to make them into a pennant style sign for my booth in Portland. 

You know Eva will want to hang this on the wall after the show.

Waste not, want not, reuse, recycle, and don't let all the work and fabrics from those blocks go to waste. I think it will be the perfect way to pull the booth together. Plus I got to use my newly acquired "knowledge of the color wheel" mad skills when choosing that purple, so I felt really cool. My family may even get dinner tonight in celebration.

Because I never feel complete without 45 more projects waiting in the wings in some capacity, be it in my head or in a pile of fabric on the cutting table or whatever, I couldn't resist stocking up on a few more projects last night at my guild meeting's UFO auction. I have to say, holy crazy awesome projects that were up for grabs. Almost every item was a kit complete with fabric and pattern, often with most of the blocks done, or tons of fabric yardage put together into one offering, or even quilt tops or other almost finished projects. All told, with the help of our fabulous auctioneer, we raised over 2K to help with our show expenses in just about an hour. I'm really just so impressed.

I brought home two projects I need like a hole in the head, and didn't realize until this morning that they were both holiday themed. I must have needed a little Christmas right that very minute and not even been aware of it. That would explain the egg nog craving.

My first winning, for a big fat $9.00, was this angel quilt. As Barb T, our auctioneer whom I think may have made her, said, "She needs a little help. Like maybe a face would be nice." Then the word "embellishment" was thrown out there and my Jewel-it bottle and I held up our numbered paper plate to bid on her.

Consider this the "before" photo. My goal is to make her stunningly fantastic before Christmas 2013.

So many ideas of ways to glam up this slightly dull angel. When I am done with her St Peter won't know what hit him.

For $28, I brought home 32 blocks that were orphaned from a BOM so that they could spend Christmas with me. Just call me Mommy Warbucks.

 I don't love the actual blocks - way too much white going on here - but I DO see a ton of possibilities for ways I can funk these up and, as Laurie B, who was sitting next to me, said, "Bethify" them. I've considered making a Christmas quilt for my bed for years, but just haven't ever gotten to it. Perhaps these will be the quilt starter and this will be the year.

Plus look how cute these fussy cut fairies are.

So for a grand total of $37, I now have two new projects waiting for me. Love it.

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