Hop Til You Drop

 

Michelle at Quilting Gallery loves a good party, so it's that time again. I'd suggest that she wants to save money on party favors by making us bloggers provide the prizes, but I'd hate to sound like I think that isn't brilliant.

Welcome, Quilting Hotties, one and all! As the tagline reads, it's not a look, it's an attitude, and therefore no one is disqualified due to leg length, hair length, or even stitch length. I embrace my hottie side by keeping it light, keeping it fresh (both in projects and attitude) and keeping it real, and I hope you'll consider stopping in again and again to recharge your own hottieness.

Depending upon what time you read this on November 21, I may well be sewing my head off at my guild's Open Sew, where I will be running a dumbed-down version of my "Round Robin in a Day" workshop with a few friends. After a day of epic block fails yesterday, I actually just finished my center block they'll be starting with, and I just love it.

Isn't it fun how the design wall is just like a gigantic used lint roller?

This class is great fun to facilitate, and even more fun to participate in, and I am so pumped to not only be creating and designing all day tomorrow as I add to three other participants' quilts, but also to be the one screaming "WE HAVE 10 MINUTES LEFT IN THIS ROUND! NO MORE TIME! GET IT DONE! NOW!" like a lunatic. Time will tell how much the other ladies appreciate my candor and inflexibility in relation to clock management.

Half the fun of this class is the prep, not only in making a cool center block, but also in rolling around naked in your stash to find all sorts of yardage to bring along for everyone to work with during the day. I found this baby and really hope it gets used!

I only wish I had more. And that trees really could be polka dotted.

I always suggest quilters bring only about 4 yards total of fabrics they would like to see in their finished round robin because we don't have room for everyone to bring their entire stashes, but you know no one listens. I kid you not, the last time I taught this class, this was Judi's work area.

There's a show-off in every crowd.

In truth, I WAS jealous of the cart.

We'll see how well my victims fellow participants follow the guidelines tomorrow. Knowing a couple of them as I do, I have little faith that we won't have at least one overpacker.

Even if you read this early, I am excited that I can come back and update with a photo of the finished round robin after the class. It will be "summerweight," as the class only guarantees leaving with a top, not a finished quilt, but I promise the transformation will be amazing. If it isn't, you'll pretend it is.

Update: We didn't quite finish. I blame the facts that I couldn't be an effective whip cracker while sewing myself, and I was working with some of the most perfectionist, most amazing quilters I know, who would not be rushed. But who cares? The results are gorgeous!

The bottom two will be completed by our guild meeting in a couple of weeks. But they've started strong.

Besides workshops and my rather hilarious and awesome but I really shouldn't say that as it sounds kinda boastful trunk show lectures for guilds and other groups, I am a quilt designer for myself and various publications, creator of "Drop and Give Me Twenty", organizer of one or two group quilt projects through this blog every year, and a mom of three girls way too young to drive themselves anywhere and who never all want to be in the same place at the same time. I'm also currently developing a new attraction coming to QHH in 2014: "Hottie Hotseat" - A monthly post highlighting an industry professional in five hard-hitting questions or less, several of them guaranteed snarky. You'll hear about it all here at QHH, and I hope you'll pop in and participate in some or all of it! 

And now we come to the goodie bag goods. To celebrate the blog hop, I'm giving away the items pictured in this oh-so-professional-looking photo. I live in the northeast. We have like 4 hours of daylight this time of year. Forgive me.

Items pictured are way more awesome than they appear.

Should you be my big winner, you will receive:

• One copy of "Diamond Dazzle," an original booklet-style pattern by moi. Five sizes, cool border options, great fun.
• Six fat-quarter-ish orange and teal modern prints. I received these from Lemon Tree Fabrics, and they are ends of bolts. They are awesome, although slightly oddly sized. You will undoubtedly deal because they are so pretty.
• Five spools of Mettler thread in various shades of pink

To enter, please leave a comment telling me your favorite appetizer or pie. Recipes not needed, but I'd never turn it down. You'll be helping me greatly as I prepare to contribute both next week to the day of merriment, thankfulness, and sheer joyous gluttony we call Thanksgiving.

For an extra entry let me know if you follow Quilting Hottie Haven. And if you don't follow, I'll need a two page single-spaced essay explaining why not.

Kidding.

Good luck, and happy hopping!

 

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.

Winner annoucements - Blog Hop Party and Giveaway Day

Or in other words, the Blizzard Buddies pattern and What's for Dinner placemat have new owners. Woo hoo!

I won't make you wait today:

Blizzard Buddies pattern and iron-on braid (which is fabulous): Kess
What's For Dinner tablemat: (And how apropos is this?) The Hungry Crafter

Congrats, ladies! Check out your inboxes and get back to me with your addresses!

I do wish you all could win as you all seem like lovely people and many of you wrote heartfelt essays about your love of my designs and wish to own one. Thank you for your lovely words; they truly remind me why I am doing this! Several of you asked about kits, patterns, or sets of the tablemat. I do have an etsy site where the mats can be custom ordered - lots of different oilcloth patterns to choose from, and if you enter IDIDNTWIN3 I'll waive domestic shipping for you. I also sell the kits there. http://www.etsy.com/listing/86836573/kid-friendly-tablemats-tablesetting. As for my patterns, please do ask at your local shop for them as I always want to support LQSs. If they can't help you, I am always more than happy to provide what you might like via email, so don't be afraid to ask.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the two giveaway blog hops last week. I feel blessed to have seen a lot of new faces at my blog and hope you will come back often. Several fun things are already in the works for next year, and you don't want to miss out!

Party it up, Hotties!

It's Quilting Gallery's 4th birthday (http://quiltinggallery.com/quilters-fun/quilters-blog-hop-party/), and we all get presents! Fantastic! By now you probably know what's going on, but if not, here's the scoop:

To celebrate, Michele Foster of Quilting Gallery is hosting a Blog Hop Party, with something like 300 quilting bloggers participating! And not only will you find some cool new blogs, but you'll have a chance to win something AT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Feeling lucky? Just comment on the individual blogs for a chance to win their giveaway.

For those coming to hang at the haven for the first time, welcome! I started this blog a little over a year ago as an outlet for my incessant need to overshare of myself with the quilt world, and I've had so much fun with it. I do try to keep it quilting related for the most part, but now and then it's also been cheaper than therapy for me. I consider myself a quilter who likes to let loose my goofball side and that's what you'll find here. I've been very lucky to have been chosen AQS Blog of the Week back in August, and was also Michele's guest blogger back in May.

I've often said, here and in real life, that my favorite part of my design career is sharing my designs in person through my trunk show lectures. I'm currently hard at work to finalize the details of my second trunk show "Plays Well With Others", which will be available to guilds at the beginning in April. The show focuses on group quiltmaking of all sorts beyond your basic round robin, because over the years I've discovered that I am no longer that control freak third grader who never wanted to work in a group in school because no one was quite as good as she was. I now leave that role to my daughter Paige. I've found a lot of joy in working on projects along with other quilters and quilt designers, and I want others to discover how fun it can be to give over a project to someone else and see what they might add to it.

To that end, I now and then will call for participants in a group project here on my blog because I always want new fodder for my lecture, and I am currently planning a new group quilt project for January. The basic block we will be creating is shown here, and I promise that in real life it is totally square so I have no idea why it looks so wonky here, and can be made from scraps you already have - in fact, that is what I am going to WANT you to do. More details will follow, so you'll want to come back in January, won't you?

Another way to keep apprised of the goings on of my random thoughts is to become part of my facebook EPQD community. I try to update it daily with just a Twitter-like statement or link to my newest blog post, and I've really tried to make it a fun place to be to exchange ideas and inspire each other. I also give away a gift (often patterns, kits, fun notions I love, once even a table runner) at the end of every month from a drawing of my new members for the month. To get to my FB page, click here. I'd love to see you there and have you join the fun, and joining this month will give you yet another entry in my giveaway!

So, you've sat through my intro/sales pitch and by now you are surely wondering if I will ever tell you what I am giving away. After all, you have 299 more blogs to visit, and I have taken up plenty of your time. To celebrate winter and all it's splendor, I am giving away a copy of my "Blizzard Buddies" pattern, along with a spool of light blue iron-on braid for embellishing your snowmen. In the snowman close up (also the profile photo for my FB page this month), the hair was made from this stuff. It's way easy to use and totally addictive. You'll be ironing braid to everything and we'll have to call you fancy.
To enter, all you have to do is leave me a comment below. In it all I ask is that after you tell me how this is your favorite new blog site (totally kidding), you let me know what your favorite and least favorite colors to use in your quilts is.

Have fun at the Blog Party and good luck! I hope to see you back soon at QHH.