Kickin' Stash Kickoff blogaround - March 12 to March 17!

One of the projects I completed during the crazy sewing month of February was my newest pattern, "Kickin' Stash". Actually, I completed two sizes of "Kickin Stash", plus three quarters of a third, but who's counting. The cover quilt is my absolute favorite and is made from 20 of the blocks gleaned from my Scrappy New Year swap - so I didn't have to do as much of the work and I still get an amazing quilt for my cover. Stick with me long enough and I'll teach you all sorts of tricks for being lazy.

You've heard about it enough from me, now it's time to hear about it from those who participated in the group quilts. I've lined up several of the ladies who participated in the block swap experience who also blog to help me debut my new Kickin' Stash pattern with a little blogaround this week, and I encourage you to visit each of their blogs to get their perspectives on what I think is a really fun pattern - but of course the jury is still out. Maybe I'll regret this by Wednesday.

Monday, March 12 - Deb Donovan (Aspen Hill) http://aspenhill.wordpress.com/

Tuesday, March 13 - Kelli Fannon (Seriously....I think it needs stitches ) www.thatlookslikeitneedsstitches.blogspot.com

Wednesday, March 14 - Anna Dzik (West Third street Designs) http://www.westthirdstreetdesigns.com/

Thursday, March 15 - Marianne Nowacki (Hillside Quiltworks) http://hillsidequiltworks.com/

Friday, March 16 - Linda Pearl (The Patchwork Pearl) http://www.thepatchworkpearl.blogspot.com/

Saturday, March 17 - Terri Sontra (Purple Moose Designs) http://www.purplemoosedesigns.com/weblog/

These ladies are all so talented and made this project almost too easy for me, and they are great bloggers to boot, so you're in for a treat. Set your Outlook alarm to 10am (or whenever) every day and see why "Kickin' Stash" is our new favorite scrap pattern!

For the week of the blogaround, I'm offering Kickin' Stash exclusively at Patternspot.com (http://patternspot.com/products/2070) for an introductory price of $7.50, which is a bit of a savings off the $9.00 print price, plus you get it immediately, with no shipping costs, and can instantly start whipping your scraps into a frenzy. There's nothing more satisfying than an emptier scrap bin replaced by a fantastic new quilt!

Cloudy with a chance of Jewel-it

We're in the last few hours of 2011, I've officially rid the house of 8 year olds and replaced them with two 9 year olds, the new electronics are miraculously working, and I'm ready for a festive NYE celebration of fondue and falling asleep by 10:30pm. Just call me the party animal that I truly am.

I had a little fun this morning, and by that I mean "I found it fun, but you will likely find it almost as pitiful a way to spend time as passed out on the couch at 10:30pm" creating a cloud of my labels for my posts over the last 16 months of blog ownership. You can find it over to the right under my lecture info but ahead of the popular posts. You might even find your own name if you are lucky.

Creating the cloud taught me a few lessons:

1. I need to be better about labeling. I mean really, only THREE labels for Jewel-it?

2. I am Terri Sontra's biggest fan, apparently.

3. I crack myself up with labels like "hot mailcarriers" and "corneal damage".

So as much as I hate New Year's Resolutions, I am going to try to be good about labeling my posts in 2012.

I'm also going to attempt to keep my studio organized - it's not QUITE as fab as I first showed you 8 weeks ago, but it's still pretty good and I'm proud; keep ongoing projects to a manageable number so as not to become overwhelmed and give up on them before finishing (yep, that was a problem this year); take an EQ class at Quilt University so as not to have to ask inane questions; and use the color red in a quilt because apparently I hate red. So far this seems fairly manageable. But give me a month.

Anyone have any more exciting resolutions or advice?

Quilting Hotties for Hooters

A couple of months ago, I received an email from Tracy Szanto, quilter and friend of a friend, who had seen my Quilting Hottie buttons at a show and wanted to incorporate the Quilting Hottie name into her Breast Cancer walk team's name. Was this okay, and could I get her some buttons for all of them? I could not answer yes fast enough. My first sort of corporate sponsorship, and for a great cause. I mean really, let's be honest, who doesn't like hooters?

Thank you to Tracy for being my second guest blogger in 8 days. Keep this up, hotties, and I may never have to write a blog post again!

2011 Quilting Hotties for Hooters. Tracy is third from the right, reddish hair and big smile.

On October 16th 2011 our team Quilting Hotties for Hooters joined over 5,000 others in Concord, NH to participate in The Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. My daughter Sharon Zimmermann and I started the team for my business "DREAMLAND Machine Quilting" (http://www.dreamlandmachinequilting.com/). This was my daughter's 7th year and I think my 5th year of doing the walk, but our 1st year of having our very own team.

In 2010 at our annual quilt show my daughter and I met Terri Sontra of Purple Moose Designs and who also belongs to our guild (The Belknap Mill Quilt Guild). Terri was a vendor at the show and she was selling these buttons that said,"Quilting Hottie!" It turns out that Beth Helfter of "Quilting Hottie Haven" (the blogspot for Eva Paige Quilt Designs) created these buttons. We had been planning to start our Breast Cancer Team and thought it might be fun to incorporate that into our team name and so that is how our team name came about.

Sharon and Tracy on registration day

The team enjoying some breakfast before a nice long walk.

Sharon showing support for her friend who was recently diagnosed.

Beth generously donated her buttons to our team which helped us raise money. I'm proud that our team raised around $2,400. The Concord, NH event raised a record breaking $568,089. We are proud to be a part of this very important event and thank everyone who donated and walked with us. I would like to thank my special team captain who kept us all in line to meet our goals, that would be my daughter Sharon Zimmermann, I couldn't ask for a more wonderful and giving daughter. Also our whole team would like to say thanks to Beth for her generous support.

Ladies, it was my honor.

This group just goes to prove what I have always known: Quilters as a whole are just really awesome people.

All of 2009's hot new quilting tools - now being used in my studio

If there is one thing you hotties all know, it is that I am borderline proud of my lack of technical skills on the computer, don't own a smart phone, have never texted, and (here's a new confession) two of the three phones in my home still have cords. Yep. I'm way cool. 1988 ruled.

But I always considered myself a little bit more hip and now when it came to quilting. I'd never call myself a gadget guru by any means, but I love new products that make my quilting life easier and I will happily watch demos and probably buy them. I cannot resist an embellishment, and own more Angelina fibers than I know what to do with (quite literally, too, as I have yet to use any of them). I'll try new things and if I love them, you will hear about them incessantly until you try them just to shut me up (Jewel-it, anyone?).

So imagine my surprise this week when in the midst of my pre-market sewing frenzy, from which I am currently taking a much needed 30 minute break, I discovered two fantastic new tools which are both far from new. How did I miss these gems? And how can I prevent the rest of you from missing out? Well, I can write a humorous and informative blog post about them, that is how.

The first tool is this little chalk marking doodad from Clover. I'm pretty sure it is circa 2002 or even earlier, and also that I am last person on earth to discover it, but after using it for one millisecond I was hooked. I've long been a user of those basic blue markers for marking (when I even mark, which is about one time in 25), and just last week was bragging to my friends Judy Damon and Terri Sontra that I was pretty sure my blue marker was 10 years old and was never going to dry out. Yeah, it heard me from 50 miles away, and two days later I went to use it and it was dead. Well, lucky for me I had some of Judy's notion stock in my garage from a show NEQDC had done that weekend, and I had only to walk 40 feet to replace my marker with this chalk liner. It has a tiny little wheel on the end reminiscent of those carbon paper wheelie markers from back in the day, and is just a basic tube filled with chalk dust and seriously marks like a dream. I bought mine in bright red so that I couldn't lose it and with pink chalk because hey, a girl needs things to be pretty, but they come in other colors too. Check out that mark. Smooth and perfect and GONE once you sew on it.

1. 
   
   The chalk can also be rubbed off easily so as to redraw your lines when you do them too quickly and they suck, as seen here.



2. No, my hand is not really pink.


The second tool making my life perfect right now is aptly named "The Binding Tool", which I bought immediately after Terri Sontra of Purple Moose Designs demoed it at our booth last weekend. It was copyrighted in 2009, but it's new to me. I've stolen Terri's photo off her website not only because it is better than what I could take, but also because I want you to check out her online shop because she has some fabulous wares at very reasonable prices. And she includes chocolate in every order.

www.purplemoosedesigns.com/rotary.htm

Holy revelation in continuous binding glory. No more will you make your binding just a bit too big or a bit too small at the meeting point! No more will you twist the tales and swear a blue streak! As Terri promised, I did have to look at the photo tutorial on her site the first time I used it on my own, but the bottom line is it worked and I could not be more thrilled with this purchase. I'll never be a fan of binding, but this tool may make me less inclined to dread the entire event.

Finally, I've discovered a cool new fabric this week as I have been furiously whipping up a sample of my "Winter Whites" pattern for a silk vendor. That fabric would be Teflon.

Just kidding. It's silk, of course, and it is a bear and a half to keep from raveling, especially when you decide to ignore all advice to cut it on a dry day and instead wait for the wettest day in a week to start your project, but a little interfacing helps with that. Isn't it nice of me to have left some of the raveling in this photo so you could see for yourself? You cannot beat the richness of color and the sheen and it is making this project look like 8 million bucks. Lucky for shoppers, it's only $9. Doesn't it seem like a bargain now? Here's a sneak preview of the awesomeness of the silk colors. I'll post a photo of the finished project later this weekend.

Okay, it's back to sewing now. Please pray for me that Greta naps this afternoon so I'll have more to show for my day!

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

This week I've been working on a quilted sign for NEQDC to hang out into the aisle at our booths at our future shows. It's a concept we saw done at Genesee Valley quilt show in June and we loved it so much that I was elected/offered/last one to say aye is it to make a fun sign for us to use. I came up with the concept of a two sided sign with our name in a block at the top and then each of us was to make two blocks representing our pattern style and I would throw them together in a row at the bottom. Quick, easy, and relatively painless. Ha.

Quick quiz, what does the NE stand for? I know, you thought it might be Naturally Elegant. Or Newly Emergent. Or Nasty Eggthrowing. All of which would be great names for my designers group, which is in actuality New England Quilt Designers Cooperative. Northeast would also work, and lucky for us, New England and NE on a map of the USA is the same thing. Good planning, forefathers. But Hotties, that is a LOT of letters to cut out for the sign, especially when you consider I had to cut them all out TWICE so I shortened it to "NE" with the group's blessing, and last night, thanks to Netflix, I was able to get all of them cut out and adhered to both main blocks of the quilt.

This morning I headed downstairs to take these cute little strips of our blocks and sew them to the bottom of each block. Gaze upon these strips and you will see one in each row from each member of the group. If we look at the top strip, that would be a Lava Lamp block from Judy Damon, a fun applique block from Kristi Parker, a snowbally block from Barbara Chojnaki, a Take Four block from Cary Flanagan, a Syncopated Ribbons block from moi, and a very fun Purple Moose from our head moose, Terri Sontra. I will be honest in tooting my own horn to say this block part of the sign was my idea and was brilliant.

What was not brilliant were my math skills. Just to review, 4 x 6 = 24. Not 18. Which is what I was thinking when I cut my main blocks to 12 x 16. Imagine my horror when I saw that this is how they would go together this morning, while I was still dealing with cramping hands from scissors last night:

Thankfully, I remembered that I suck at math but immediately rejoiced that I had at least done the central block with one side divisible by 4. Dumb luck at it's finest. So I just reworked the design (after all, if I couldn't do that I wouldn't be much of a quilt designer, would I?) and the result, I have to say, is adorable.
Here is one side:

Here is the other:

I decided I didn't care to put a binding on and take away from the blocks at all, so it's just poor-man serged using a big old zig zag. Much quicker than trying to set up and figure out my serger this morning.

If you are heading to Maine Quilts in a few weeks, please stop by and check out our sign in person! It will be its first time at a show and it needs some lovin'!

Storming the Festival

I recently returned home from Rochester NY, a town famous for two things:

1. I was born there.

and

2. The Genesee Valley Quilt Festival.

Since they were not planning any parades in celebration of my birth 40-some odd years ago, the Quilt Fest was going to have to do for a reason to return. So a week ago I hopped in the car on a dreary afternoon and headed down the Massachusetts Turnpike, rocking out to all sorts of 80s music on the radio and generally enjoying the moments of solitude before driving boredom was sure to set in. I needn't have worried. Not an hour into my drive, the sky opened up like a car wash, the winds were insane, and hailstones started hitting my car. I couldn't see two feet in front of me. Then, stuck 8 miles between exits off the pike in either direction, my radio starts beeping the National Weather Emergency beeps that normally are reserved only for tests in the middle of Elmo's World because there is a Flipping TORNADO in the vicinity. I had about 5 minutes of sheer panic attack not knowing where the hell to put myself and the car, and just kept going because everyone else on the road was doing the same. Visions of the 30-ish quilts belonging to myself and other members of NEQDC in my car cycloning over central Massachusetts filled my head - and then it was over as soon as it began, blue skies ahead. I later found out that yes, there was an F3 (does F stand for flipping? Because it should.) tornado less than 20 miles from where I was at that moment. Well, played, mom and my other guardian angels. Well played indeed.

So, as Cary Flanagan, one of my NEQDC colleagues who joined me on the trip (although she took the wimpy way out and drove through only beautiful weather the next day) noted, I can now "say for sure that neither hail, nor rain, nor tornados will keep me" from bringing EPQD to the masses. But I must admit I hope never to have it happen in such a dramatic fashion again. And my heart goes out to all those in MA who lost their homes or worse that afternoon. It was a freakish thing and truly terrifying.

Anyhoo, on to the show! Genesee Valley Quilt Guild is a 300+ member guild and they truly know how to put on a show. Over 1000 quilts, several traveling exhibits, a fashion show, two live auctions, and my personal favorite, the Iron Quilter competition. I was chomping at the bit to participate in that one; quilters were given 5 hours to create a quilt, start to finish, including quilting, binding, embellishment, sleeve and label , and when I tell you these quilts were A-Maz-Ing I am not giving them enough credit. Holy insane talent.

New England Quilt Designers Cooperative was one of 41 vendors at the show. Terri Sontra, another NEDQC member, and I arrived a day early to do set up and I must say we did a fantabulous job. If you have read our "Strength in Numbers" article in The Quilter (shameless plug), you will recall we often refer to setting up even a double booth with all of the samples from six designers as trying to fit 10 pounds of sugar in a five pound bag, and this time was no different. Thankfully we did have another show going on in Connecticut (where member Barbara Chojnacki was doing a bang up job representing us), so this time we were down several samples and that actually was a blessing. I snapped these photos toward the end of set up:

Note "Beth's Embellishmenty Corner," where I spent much of the weekend demo-ing my favorite glue, Jewel-it, and selling it by the truckload.

The show was held in the RIT Field House and was way cool to look down on from the upper track area. See that marquee on the left? It's a little blurry, but it says "New England Quilt Designers Cooperative" - all the vendors were scrolling all weekend long. Very cool. If you wonder where the people are, well, we'll admit this was the slow day, but these photos were also taken during the fashion show, so most people were sitting at the very end of the room enjoying that event.

Despite the tornadic experience of getting there, I'm so glad we participated. Not only was it a fun show, but I learned two very important things about the women who worked the booth with me:

1. Cary Flanagan (Something Sew Fine Design) unwinds in the evening with a Port and Orange Juice cocktail which is actually quite pretty.

2. Terri Sontra (Purple Moose Designs) has as crazy a life as I do and her dog receives a pension from the state of California. Love it.

God only knows what they learned about me.

Little did I know that