It's Giveaway Day!

Wowsa.

I am so completely overwhelmed by the number of visitors to this site over the last 24 hours, since Quilter's World linked our prodigal quilt story to their FB page. I can only say that when I checked the stats last night for the day I quite literally shrieked and fell out of my chair, and not only because Greta had just snuck up on me out of nowhere and said "Mom!" in my ear, although yes that was part of it.

So WELCOME to all new followers and visitors. I am so excited to have you find me and I hope you will return now and then to see what we're up to here in EPQDland.

I thank you all for not pointing out that 9:07 has come and gone and I didn't post this in time. There were a few technical difficulties in my random giveaway of a copy of the April Quilter's World.

1. Cars cannot run on fumes forever, and I had to finally stop and get some gas this morning.
2. I have no idea how to post a random number generator and finally gave up.
3. However, said random number generator didn't help me in the least because it kept choosing people who were "no-reply" bloggers, so I couldn't contact them to tell them they had won.

I mention this not to shame anyone, because I only JUST within the last 5 weeks or so found out that I too was a no-reply blogger and had to do some such thing to fix it, so trust me you are not alone in your blogging bliss of thinking you have done everything properly! I can't recall exactly what it was I did to fix it, but I'm pretty sure I must have googled how to fix it because google solves all. Anyway, if you are a no-reply blogger, your email is hidden and therefore I have no way of contacting you. So I had to move on to someone else.To see if you fall in that category, click on your name in your comment, and if your profile shows up without a link to an email, yes, you are a no-replier. Just a little techie tip for the day, which coming from me is always hilarious.

So after several stops and starts, my winner is...........Julie! From her profile, I learned she's a fairly new quilter who embraces the Friends, Fabric, and Fun of quilting and what more could I ask for in a winner? Oh, but there's more. She also loves soft rock from the 80s. Okay then. Sold.

Congratulations, Julie! I'll be sending you an email, because I can :), to let you know you won!

Thank you all for participating and I'll hope to see you back soon. If you haven't done so, check out my FB page....now and then I get a hankering for just giving something away randomly on there and I think I may feel a hankering coming on soon.

So now what?

You are either in withdrawal from my daily posts during the month of February, or you are disgusted to see me back so quickly. Either way, HI! Here I am again!

The "Drop and Give Me Twenty" challenge, aka "Sew Your Face Off in February", may be over, and you may think I gave my sewing machine a much needed break, but no. This weekend my husband earned his daddy stripes well and pretty much took over so I could (almost) finish another top. Man my studio is an utter disaster again after all this sewing. I think my next challenge will be "Who Can Clean Their Sewing Studio the Fastest" as that is the only thing that might motivate me.

But my biggest excitement this weekend was learning that the April/May issue of Quilter's World had softly begun creeping onto newsstands, and since I had not yet gotten my hands on a copy and therefore had not yet seen the actual article, Saturday afternoon I went out in search of this elusive beast. Imagine my joy when I found a stack of them at Shaws supermarket. I'm imagining your shock when I tell you I actually left a few there.

Did my little happy dance in the magazine aisle, then decided I would pay for them (I'm not a criminal, after all) and drive over to Barnes and Noble where I could get a tea and read it at my leisure. A lovely plan.

Reality: I barely made it to the car before I had to tear the thing open and gaze at my pattern in there.



I apologize for my geekiness, and I promise that by my ninth or tenth time as a cover girl, I'll cut it out. Maybe.

"Quite Contrary" was written as a "stash management" project and as much as I love the fact that I made it onto the cover, I also really really love the project, which is unbelievably easy, uses supplies you likely already have at home (hence, stash management), and is great for showing off big, fat, modern prints. I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think!

So on to March and what is next. My major February project of getting my group quilt blocks made up into a cover quilt for my next pattern and writing said pattern will all result in a pattern debut next week. Stay tuned for the "Kickin' Stash" Kickoff blog-a-round March 12-17 (see blog button above), and you'll get an opportunity to check out some blogs by some of the quilters who participated in the group project and find out how much fun they had. I've got some really cool blogs lined up, and you won't want to miss them!

Also in blogland, I'm planning to have guest bloggers here at QHH during the month of April. (Side note, everytime I write QHH I think it looks like a home shopping network. Not a line of work I want to get into.) If you might be interested in being a guest blogger during the month of April, please email me at evapaigequilts@charter.net and let me know. We'll work out all the details!

Thanks for your continued reading!

DaGMT - Day 15 "Holy ^&*&*@!$ *(^#!"

You know that moment in the day when you realize you will be accomplishing nothing for the remainder? Today that moment for me coincided with the moment I released my inner truck driver when at 10:30ish am, I discovered that a quilt I designed is on the cover of the newest issue (April/May 2012) of Quilter's World magazine.



I almost died of shock, then I shook so hard I couldn't breathe, then the expletives were flying as I danced around the house screaming. Someday, like maybe next week, I will look back on this behavior and think "What a loser I am", but for today I'm happily a huge geek.

For a brief moment, it was a little sad that I so covet the quiet house in the morning that there was no one home to share my joy, but thankfully my husband answered his phone and did a remote happy dance with me. My apologies to his coworkers; I know it isn't pretty. Also, the children would have been horrified by my language, not to mention my dancing skills, so it's probably best that they were not exposed to the whole scene.

This quilt, "Quite Contrary", was born last April at my guild's annual spring retreat at Lake Shore Farm in NH. I quite literally put this thing together from scratch from 9:30pm to midnight on Saturday evening while suffering from moderate to severe corneal damage after burning my eyeball with ClearCare solution. I designed it thinking it would be a freebie on my blog, but Maria Peagler posted these words that changed my mind "Free is not a business plan." So I said, "What the heck? I'll shop the thing around and see what happens."

Holy happenings! Never in a million years would I have thought this thing would end up on the cover of a national publication!

Will I be pouring ClearCare into my eyeballs to inspire future quilt greatness? No. But I'll admit it's slightly tempting.

Mini Oscar speech: Thank you to Melissa Heys, of The Completed Quilt (www.thecompletedquilt.com) who is truly a fabulous and amazing machine quilter who always manages to fit me in and make my simple designs breathtaking. Thank you to Renae Mathe for whipping up a sample to make sure my directions made sense. Thank you to Carolyn Vagts and the entire staff of Quilter's World for being so easy to work with and making my entire month.

But mostly, thank you to my daughter, Eva Catherine Helfter, who only threw seven fits rather than 20 when I had to ship this quilt off to QW for almost a year rather than immediately putting it onto her bed where it was meant to reside. Every now and then over the last 10 months she has said to me "WHEN am I getting my quilt back? I NEED my quilt! My other one is so BABYISH!" Well Kitty, now your quilt is famous, you can lord this fact over your sisters until the end of time, and I think you can get over it.

Oh, and I also got "Kickin' Stash" (loving this name, and I think it's going to be THE ONE) cover quilt put together and four out of 12 border strips on.



I'm so glad this good hair day wasn't wasted on an overall crappy day.

Bring it, dual February breaks coming up. I feel like I can take you on now.