Block #4! Maggie's Dance Card is Getting Full!

Well, thank God for this sew along. Otherwise, I obviously would have no need to blog! Have I mentioned August is not my favorite month? And clearly I had nothing good to say. So let's hope September is better and this isn't the only time you'll be hearing from me!

One of the reasons I was only too happy to lend my blogging and sewing services to this sew along is that as a designer, I rarely have time to work with someone else's pattern. Between all the designs in my own head and trying to work on those, weed out those that don't work, get a few out into the world each year, and sharing them on the road with lectures and workshops, along with these other people living in my house and demanding attention, it's honestly a real treat to just follow someone else's lead for a bit, and of course to put my own little touch on it in the form of scrappiness!

The green/blue/purple/yellow theme continues with block #4!

And you know what else continues? My overarching lifetime theme of imperfectionism.

Nice job on that butterfly placement! Woo hoo!

You might wonder if I noticed the problem before I added the grey corner. You might not be at all surprised that yes, I did, but my next thought after an expletive was "What the heck ever." Sometimes butterflies fly just out of our sight. Let's pretend I wanted to get all philosophical with this block and the meaning of butterflies we just can't quite reach, rather than the true fact that I suck at applique placement.

In other imperfect news, I am still trying to decide if I should redo the purple in block #2 - top left in this photo.

True to my word at the beginning, I've kept it scrappy and used different greens, blues, purples, yellows, and even different greys and whites in each block. It's all being pulled from my scrap bins every month. My actual yardage stash is likely feeling very neglected. In any case, though, the purple in block #2 is a bit more on the maroon side than the rest of them. Can I live with it? I'm not, after all, one to stress over these things or be one with my seam ripper. I am, however, one to be obsessive about color sense, and I think I generally have a good one.This purple just might not work. But I'm willing to do some alternate blocks next month and see if I can settle it down a bit.

I'm sure you all have opinions. Feel free to share them. I may or may not take your advice or my own even, but it's always nice to have options and ideas.

This month's giveaway is sponsored by Deanne of Snuggles Quilts. Who doesn't love a snuggle?

Win three of her beautiful patterns just by entering! In the comments, to celebrate the end of my least favorite season and the beginning of my favorite, tell me what you are looking forward to most about this fall. If you hate fall, that's okay, but I hope you can find something to look forward to in the next few months or life will just be sad. Sad like half a butterfly. We don't want that.

Happy sewing! 

Maggie's First Dance BOM #3

We're back! And guess who is not only your blogger of the moment today, but also the prize sponsor this month? OMG......IT'S ME! And my Mod-ified Trees kit! 

 So crazy, right? And here you all thought I was just hanging out behind the scenes, putting together my blocks and blogging wittily about the process. But as with all of us, in reality I'm so much more. This post should prove that by the end!

Let's get started on Block #3!

As you can see, mine continues in that blue/yellow/purple/green scrappy theme, and this time adds a touch of whimsy in the form of "I threw this thing together the night before I left for 10 days in Vancouver and Alaska and I didn't even bother to trim it before snapping the photo." But you get the idea. It's (basically) done and awaits only some machine applique thread work and trimming.

I'm going to show you in a second how I went about using the Transdoodle by Mistyfuse with my applique pieces because it might just be my most favorite new notion, but first let's point one thing out....remember my fancy little tip last month about flipping your fabric over and using the "wrong" side if it is just a little "too"? Well, this month my grey fabric was just a little too dark and features that little trick..and if you compare the photo above of the pieced grey pieces with the photo below of the grey piece I used for applique, you can totally see it. It's like two fabrics in one! Who wouldn't love that?

But yeah, on to the Transdoodle! Mistyfuse Iris is one of my sponsors for my Teal Mini Swap (more below) and in addition to sponsoring a blog giveaway, she also was kind enough to throw a Transdoodle in for me because I said I was a little bit fascinated with the idea of it. And then I used it for this block and man, I'm even  more so! It's a packet of tracing papers of different colors and tones (dark to light) with a powdery substance (not anthrax) (I'm assuming) on one side which you use to trace your applique shapes onto your fabrics prepared with Mistyfuse. No more #2 pencils and parchment! 

So here's what you do. First, rough cut your applique pieces (NOT THE SHAPES!) and fit them together as best you can on a piece of Mistyfuse. I used one about 10" square(ish).

It works much better if you can place the Mistyfuse on parchment first, but it is hard to see the Mistyfuse in the photo when I did that. So here's what it really looks like. I promise the Mistyfuse is there.

Then you are going to want to put a second layer of parchment over the top of the whole thing and press well. The Mistyfuse just kind of melts right into the fabric.

You can either cut your pieces apart once they are all fused, or just leave them together. I opted to leave them together and just line up my shapes with the fabrics I was going to use for them, but either way will work. Do what works best for you.

 To transfer the markings, I layered the Transdoodle sheet (I'm using white here, since I started with the flower, which is a dark color) on top of the WRONG SIDE of the fabric (ie the Mistyfuse side)

 Then all you have to do is trace with some sort of sharpish/bluntish object that won't make a mark, like a hera tool, a dry ballpoint pen, or raid the "weird tools" slot of your notions box and grab the kabob stick you use for turning tubes. That's what I used.

 I of course forgot to take a photo of the flower, but here you can see how the leaf shape turned out when I used the Transdoodle. Pretty cool, huh? Then all you have to do is cut it out and place it!

 Thanks Jacquelynne for another lovely little flower block.

Along with Maggie's BOM, I'd like to take a moment to talk about my current project, one that Jacquelynne was kind enough to help me out with by being a blogger and giveaway spot herself last week - My annual Teal Mini Swap. It's a mini swap (natch) and fundraiser for Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and I'm running it for the fifth year to coincide with September being Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.

Each year, I've been blessed to have quilters come together from all over the USA to join me in this event. Participants pay $15 to register, $10 of which is donated to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. The rest goes to my expenses, which thanks to the USPS are not insubstantial. Why OCRF? Simply put, they are leading the way in both research and awareness for this deadly horrible disease, and have been doing so ever since my mom was first in treatment 16 years ago. Even 14 years after her death I still receive their newsletters and am amazed by the advances, most of which might have kept her alive long enough to meet her first grandchildren in 2002 had they been available then....but it's still never enough. I don't want more women to be affected. I don't want quilters to have this disease happen to them. I can't prevent it, but I can use my  internet presence to make a difference each year. To date, my fundraiser has raised over 7000 dollars (including this year's registrations so far) for OCRF. Sure, it's not millions. But it's a start.

This year's fabric sponsor (I'm big enough for a fabric sponsor, anyway! Woo Hoo!) is Moda, and swappers all receive a piece of this fabric, modeled by me, to be used in the mini they will make for their partner.

 Registration began last week, and will continue until August 29. We've already got participants from 44 states and I'd love to turn the whole map teal!

Here's a few of the cool minis swappers received last year. You can see even more by scrolling through our Teal Mini Swap Facebook group. The talent in this group amazes me more every year.

Jacquelynne was lovely to help me out with the kickoff, so please check out her blog too! She just might inspire you. And if you want to register to join the swap, I certainly won't stop you! Let's kick ovarian cancer to the curb and run it over with the car for good measure.

But now back to this month's BOM giveaway, my cute little Mod-ified Trees kit. This silly little pattern is way fun to whip together and takes just an afternoon - FOR REAL! It's almost as much fun to pick out the fabrics, so I love putting together the kits!

It's even a really great pattern when done in country colors, like one customer made!

To enter to win the kit, please leave me a comment telling me if you like the color teal, or if you think teal is the color of gangrene. Or both. I suppose they don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive options! If you don't like teal, do tell me a color or palette you prefer to use instead when you create. We all have our favorites!

Thanks for stopping by! I look forward to Block #4 with you!

Block #2 Maggie's First Dance BOM

The resounding message I received from my first block posting was heard loud and clear - "WE LOVE YOUR COLORS!" Well, thank you, hotties every one of you. You have impeccable taste when it comes to color sense.

I loved all of the blocks I saw from my fellow bloggers, so I know this is high praise indeed.

As you may recall, I had decided to go with "scrappy" as my theme for this BOM, but that's about as far as I had gotten in my planning. Your love of my colors made me cement my thought that I might keep the same color families (green, purple, blue, yellow, white, grey) for each block, but use different fabrics of those colors in each block. So that's exactly what I did.

Forgive the wrinkles. Not only is it still scrappy, but it flew 800 miles stuffed in a suitcase.

You may note that I tried a little something new with this block, and that something was thread painting the center part. In my mind, this was going to be quicker than tracing and cutting out and fusing and appliqueing all the little pieces down. This notion proved to be laughably inaccurate and proved yet again how very entertaining it must be to live in my mind. But whatever. It was an experience.

It's pretty clear that I used the time-honored motto of "If you can't do it well, do it with enthusiasm." In all honesty, it's frightening how many areas of my life this motto has been applied to, but that's a story for another day. In this case it was worth it to try something a bit new and see what happened. That's another of my mottoes (nod to Dan Quayle) and I'll never regret being adventuresome! I'm not sure if I'll attempt it on another block center or not, but I'm glad I gave it a go.

It was a pretty simple method - pin the block pattern to fabric and stabilizer, outline with thread of choice, and color it in with back and forth or loopy loops. When you get right down to it, all thread painting is is coloring in with thread.

One tip I can give about fabric choice that I use frequently: if your fabric is a little too "too" on the right side (a little too dark, a little too printy, a little too textured, a little too much in any way), flip it over and use the back. I did that for both white and grey in this block, and it really helped keep things from getting too "in your face" with the grey and too "why is the alphabet scattered all over the background" with the white. Check it out! You just doubled your fabric stash with that one tip! Feel free to buy me a drink sometime.

Since I brought this block all the way to Minnesota, I figured I'd better give it a little photo shoot for you.

Once you make your own block, give it a photo shoot of your own and share it in any of these ways so we can all see it!

• http://jacquelynnesteves.com/maggie-bom-linky-page/
• https://www.pinterest.com/jacquelynnes/maggies-first-dance-block-of-the-month/
• https://www.facebook.com/groups/SewQuiltyFriends.JacquelynneSteves/
• Instagram #MaggieQuilt
  

So on to the giveaway. This month we have two sponsors, and if you are in the continental US, you can enter both!

The first, available for US addresses only as those pesky shipping regulations make sending aerosols across borders prohibitive, is a prize pack from Therm-o-Web. I love a good adhesive for applique or basting, and I'm sure you do as well!

For our international and HI and AK friends, Michele at the Quilting Gallery is offering up a prize pack of pattern and template for "Starlight."

To enter for the international prize, you will need to head on over to http://quiltinggallery.com/blog-posts and enter directly on Michele's blog. She's a spunky Canadian who will be happy to help out our international friends! If she gets a winner from Juneau, though, I may offer to deliver it in person as I'm headed there soon!

To enter to win the Therm-o-Web prize, please comment where you live, and what you would have me do if I were to visit your town (a favorite restaurant, special park, tourist attraction, etc). You just never know...I might find myself there and need something to do!

See you next month!

Maggie's First Dance Block #1 -

Totally keep forgetting to ask Jacquelynne who Maggie is. Sigh. But whoever she is, let's get ready to swing her right onto the dance floor!

I hope you've gotten a chance to check out Jacquelynne's directions for the first block. I found them very easy to follow and was able to whip up mine pretty quickly. As one who has quilted before might imagine, the most time consuming part was picking out the fabrics.

I knew I wasn't going to be embroidering the center, because though I used to be quite the embroiderer (and a bit of a total geek) at age 11, I really am not into it anymore. I guess I'm all about the time factor, and cutting out applique shapes just takes less time. In looking at my block now, I'm not sure why I didn't use the yellow in the centers of the flowers, but what the heck. What's done is done. And it still looks pretty nice, in my oh so humble opinion.

As I may have mentioned in my intro post, I don't really plan to stick to any certain fabrics throughout this project, but I will try keep the grey and white and maybe the purple (or a purple, anyway) consistent. As a scrap quilt designer I totally believe in both the power of scrappy to punch up your quilt and make it sizzle, but also in the need for consistency in the chaos. The grey and white and purple will be my constants. That's all I'm promising for now. But do keep in mind I am a woman, and we do enjoy changing our minds continuously.

Once you make your block, be sure to head on over to Jacquelynne's Sew Quilty Friends FB group and show us what you did! I'd love to have you stop by my EvaPaige Quilt Designs page while you are over there too!

I am so excited that Aurifil is our sponsor this month! There will be one winner chosen from each blog participating, and the lovely people at Aurifil will choose one of the collections shown above for you. You really can't go wrong with any of them.

 I'm a huge fan of Aurifil thread, and ever since I discovered its joys a few years ago I've used it exclusively for all of my machine applique and machine quilting and have not looked back. I can even prove I have a decent collection by showing how I was able to quickly grab a spool of each of the colors in my block, and it's even pretty obvious some of them have been used extensively.

I became infatuated with Aurifil at Quilt Market one year, and was lucky enough to score one of the coveted tickets to my LQS's evening with Alex Veronelli, of Aurifil hottie fame, where we learned how the thread is made and believe it or not even though that sounds like the worst science fair project ever, it is actually quite fascinating when told to you in imovie format by a silver fox. I'm just saying.

He looks pretty thrilled to pose with me, don't you think?

Enter to win one of the fab little collections by commenting below which quilting personality you've talked to in person, whether you made coherent sense at the time or were too in awe and just babbled, or if you haven't met any, who would you like to meet? I'm leaving the interpretation of "personality" wide open, in the hope that puts me in the running because I'd love to see a huge variety, and I'm sure I will. This industry is chock full of cool quilty peeps who make it their job to provide quilters with constantly fresh products and ideas, and they can be so inspirational in person! I know Alex inspired me to switch entirely to Aurifil for quilting, and that's a big deal. What a salesman.

If you don't end up winning, or just can't wait to see if you do, I'm certain my friend Donna at Follow That Thread can hook you up. At risk of sounding like an infomercial, I will admit I'm a gusher, and when I love something, I don't shut up about it. But it's time to go for now so I will do so.

See you next month! In the meantime, make sure you check out what all the other bloggers are doing too!

Greg at Grey Dogwood Studio
Monique at Farm House Quilts
Julie at The Crafty Quilter
Me - Beth at EvaPaige Quilt Designs
Kim at My Go-Go Life
Jacque at Lily Pad Quilting
Brenda at The Quilting Nook

Maggie's First Dance BOM - Will You Be Dancing?

Welcome all BOMers who figured they'd better check me out as a sponsor! I hope to do this lovely program justice and am also hoping to keep up with you all. So far so good, but then again I did get a head start. Which of course I waited until yesterday to make. But you know, good intentions.

So by way of introduction for those who don't know me, a few stats about me you might or might not find important:

• Years as a quilter: 21
• Age: Older than 21
• Design Style: Scrappy and imperfect
• Biggest pile in my stash: Teal
• Almost non-existent pile in my stash: Red
• How my children described me when I asked them what was interesting about me: "Loud," "Creepy," and "You talk too much."
• What I'll be doing as soon as I finish this post: Researching boarding schools
• Three random truths: I still have a baby tooth, I'm allergic to coffee, and I've traveled to all 48 contiguous states. (And I'll check off Alaska this summer!)  

If you just happened upon here and didn't know, Jacquelynne Steve's newest BOM (FREE BOM, by the way!) starts in June! It's called Maggie's First Dance and I keep thinking "I really must ask Jacquelynne who Maggie is..." but of course I think of this at really bizarro times, like when I am driving or in the shower. At some point we will get to the bottom of that mystery.

Maggie's First Dance BOM by Jacquelynne Steves

For now, head on over to her sight and check out all the details and why not sign up? Just go here:  http://jacquelynnesteves.com/maggies-first-dance-block-of-the-month/ and enter the deets. It's free, did I mention? It's a nice size wallhanging or lap quilt, so not an overwhelming undertaking even for newbies, and it's just six months long, so definitely doable! My first block is even already done, though you'll have to wait to see how it came out!

I haven't traditionally been big into stars in my design life, but lately I'm kind of digging them. I even used them in Scintillating Stars, my 46th (!) pattern that came out last month.

I'm excited about the stars in Maggie too, because they all look a bit different in each block. I do love a pattern that switches up every block just a little...keeps things fresh for me!

To celebrate the start of the BOM, Jacquelynne is doing a giveaway, too! As a blog sponsor I've offered up several of my Mod-ified Trees kits, which she'll be offering up at another time, but right now you can enter to win two of her own patterns, Merry Go Round and Amelia!

To enter, leave a comment telling me about the best place you ever vacationed or traveled to, because now that I'm so close to my bucket list of hitting all 50 states I'm going to need some new ideas.

I also invite you to follow me on Facebook and/or IG (@evapaigequilts), where throughout the BOM you'll get all sorts of first looks at my blocks as each new one is revealed!