"And More!" - Quiltmaker 100 Blogs blog tour

 

Volume #8 of QM's 100 Blocks hits the stands next week, and we're celebrating with a blog tour! If you haven't been touring around cyberspace yet for a preview of many of the blocks, head on over to Quiltmaker's blog for all the details - and prizes. As if a visit here to Quilting Hottie Haven weren't prize enough.

While this volume does indeed feature lots of blocks "from today's top designers" as promised on the cover, I am very much aware that I personally am firmly in the "And More!" crowd. It's really terribly exciting to be hanging with the cool kids, though! Fingers crossed they invite me to sit at their lunch table.

One of my very favorite moments at Spring Market was when Carolyn Beam, QM Editor, wandered  into my booth and handed me the 100 Blocks entry form. I'd considered entering in the past but in all honesty had been too distracted (read: kinda too lazy) to locate the form. Now that it had been handed to me by the big guns I had no excuse.

Fabrics look familiar?

By some miracle, I didn't lose the form between Portland and home, and submitted "Hidden Garden," so named because I had just read "The Forgotten Garden" and the design certainly looks like my mind was still in a walled English garden. Lo and behold it became block #781.

I am absolutely amazed by the quality of the photo they took of my block. Clearly they have a fancier camera over there at  Quiltmaker than the one in my iphone. To see my block in shiny glossy splendor sandwiched between offerings from The Quilt Company and Jaybird Quilts (so very much NOT "and mores") is a little thrill every time I turn to page 65.

Those who know my "fun over fuss" style of design might be surprised to see so many points to match. Eh. There aren't as many as you think. Or maybe there are and you'll just have to give it a try and find out if I am turning over a new leaf or if maybe I just got distracted by the pretty fabrics. (Hint: It's the latter.) Loved these fabrics and they screamed "Garden!" to me. I told them to use an inside voice and we got creative together.

I played around with the block a lot this summer, and as I am wont to do, changed it up a little here and there to show what you can do with both the actual block as seen in 100 Blocks and with a few minor changes.

Set it with sashing in two solids from your color palette:

You might want to fill in that one sashing square I left blank. Just saying.

Try two different solids with the same prints:

Make nine of these blocks and you'd have a sweet little baby quilt. For a girl. I've heard boy babies don't love florals and hot pinks.

Change up the outer solid border to a scrappy one in prints rather than a solid for a truly scrappy runner:

Well, it will be a runner when it is bordered, quilted, and bound, but you get the idea.

Leave off the outer solid entirely and you get a cool new secondary design, as in this quilt I sewed my face off on all Labor Day weekend to get it submitted by the deadline, and woo hoo! it made it into the Designer's Gallery! Thank God, and thank Carolyn for putting it in, as I used it as an excuse to get out of all childcare responsibilities over the long weekend, and if it hadn't been included I couldn't have pulled that excuse in the future.

Those familiar with my style recognize this quilt as more my thing. Even one of my 10 year olds saw this and said "Uh, Mom? That's just Kickin' Stash." Well, no. It isn't, actually, although it is unwittingly similar and apparently I have a type in quilt block love as well as in men. Circular-ish scrappy in blocks, left-handed and studly in men, for those keeping track of such things.
 
My favorite part of this design send-up is the four patch cornerstones in the border. Simple but fitting. Isn't it delightful when we amaze ourselves with our design choices?


And how fun to find my block among those used in the Block Tester's Gallery of Volume 8 as well, this time with a totally different coloration and set on point in the borders of a quilt by Shannon Ownby. If there is anything I shake my head at in quilting, it is the thought that a block can only be made in the colors and/or fabrics shown in the photo, and I absolutely love that a tester saw my block in a completely different way than I did and made it work in her design. Thanks to my friend and fellow contributor Anne Weins, who pointed this extra block sighting in Volume 8 out to me. Bonus excitement!

I hope you enjoy all of the blocks and blogs on this tour. Quiltmaker is graciously giving away a copy of the magazine to a winner from each participating blog, and I invite you to enter while you are here. Just leave me a comment telling me what your current quilt project is - I know, I know, you have 47 projects going on now, just pick your favorite - and you are entered to win. I'd love if you considered following me here at QHH for fun and quilty snarkiness on a semi-regular basis, but that is not required for entry.

AND

For a second entry, head on over to my EPQD facebook page and leave a comment on the post that links to this blog post. I'll send one winner a signed copy of 100 Blocks. Because my "and more" signature will surely up the value on Ebay, right?

Both entries will be drawn at 10:30pm EST (or is it EDT? I never know what we are in at whatever time of year, but Eastern Time) Sunday November 17. Be sure you leave me a way to find you, like an email. I've had no luck with smoke signals in the past.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you back soon!

 

The Great Rainbow Balls Takeover and OI Raffle Quilt

It's officially Mud Season! And what does that mean? Well, this year it means the Rainbow Balls Takeover of the Lawrence Library art gallery.

Every March, my Squanicookies quilt guild hangs a mini quilt show of our coolness in the art gallery of our local library. It is always amazing and stunning, and not to brag (too much), but it is the most popular of all of the different art shows that go in there each year. I think it may be because our brand of art comes in so many sizes that we can totally fill the walls floor to ceiling in a way other types of art cannot. But I digress in order to brag. 

I was unable to help set up the show this year, but was thrilled to check it out one day after school and lo and behold, two of my tester participants from the "Kickin' Stash" group quilt had finished their quilts and put them in the show. As you may recall, Paige suggested the names "Rainbow Balls" or the forever classy "Blue and Purple Balls" as a name for "Kickin' Stash", and these two quilts do give her argument some merit. I love that Barbara T (quilt on wall in above photo) "borrowed" some blocks from another friend who participated, so she only had to make a few extra to complete her baby quilt. Angie C (quilt on piano) made two borders pink and two blue, which is a blatant deviation from the pattern. Who said she could do that? Well, me, in any given lecture, actually. I love it.

Also showing in the photo in almost the dead center is an "All-A-Flutter", my prairie point heart pattern that was in Quilter's World earlier this year, also made by Angie. She's our resident overachiever after all. I love that Paige's reaction to this whole show was "Mom! This show couldn't even happen without you." Untrue, but swoon.

For your viewing pleasure, some more photos of our show:

Angie also made the funky heart one on the bottom here. Yes, we all roll our eyes at her. The top one is all Jinny Beyer fabrics and is very stunning. I think it was made by Marie A, who also is quite prolific.

Made by Regina M from a kit. Regina does beautiful work but claims to be a beginner. She is crazy.

 Aside: The ornament quilt above was designed by Ann Lauer. I think she may be a liker on my FB page, and I hope she sees this.

We had a workshop where people made the braided quilt on the right; unfortunately I don't know who did that one but it is lovely. Cath H did the black and white one with the pop of orange. Love.

I have no idea who made any of these. Angie probably made them all. But do keep the bottom right one in mind for a moment or two from now.

Some cute small quilts. And some random flowers.

Don't know who made these, but we have to love them.

 Wasn't that fun? Don't you feel like you were there?

Now, check out the quilt below, which is not currently hanging off my deck but it looks so cute there I probably should have just left it. Also check out that blue blue sky as exhibit A as to why I love New England winters. The 6" of snow still on the ground at the end of March this year is NOT a reason, but that isn't "normal." It is, however, "annoying."

So this quilt is made from the same fabrics as that one I told you to make note of up there (Basic Grey, good luck finding them as they are a year old). Totally different looks to them, though, since this one was made with a few slices of layer cake (ie not the whole stack) and a focus fabric and the one up top was a jelly roll.

I started this quilt about a year ago, trying to replicate how I had made a quilt that now resides on Greta's bed. Unfortunately for me, I never wrote down what I was doing, and I never could figure out how to make the blocks like I had the first time. So the whole project ended up in my UFO pile until this year's DAGMT, when I pulled out some of the blocks and trimmed them so they fit together and whipped up this baby quilt.

To look at the UFO basket you'd never know it was gone, but I know, and that makes me happy.

It also makes me happy that this baby quilt has been donated to The Alle Shea Project in Rochester NY, to be raffled off during their "Walk N Wheels" event on May 4 at North Ponds Park in Webster NY. The Alle Shea Project was founded by Kim and Angelo Colazzo to raise awareness for Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a genetic brittle bone disease that claimed the life of their daughter Alle Shea after only five weeks of life. They have done an amazing job as a grass roots cause and I wanted to help out in some way because Kim was actually my BFF in elementary school as well as our moms being our Girl Scout troop leaders and very good friends for life themselves. We'd lost touch over the years but through the power of FB have reconnected and I am honored to be able to do even a small thing to help them honor the daughter they lost. I wish them all the best in their fight for awareness.

Up next....time to fight with the weather, quilt rack, and camera again to get a photo of Taking Names before I lose my mind. The failed attempts have been stunningly disastrous so far. Wish me luck.

Kickin' up my heels at the Festival of Scrappiness

I came across Stitched In Color's blog last week, and I am so happy I did. Not only is it a fun place to visit, but I was just in time to plan my entry for her Festival of Scrappiness (and how "me" is that name?) today through Wednesday. It's a fun linky party where you can enter any scrap quilt you have completed in 2012.

Might I pause to mention that I love that by "completed", she means the top is done. A woman after my own heart. So given the fab linky party name and the flexible definition of done, I obviously had to participate.

You think you know what I am entering. You are only half right.

It's "Kickin' Leaves" - my second group quilt sample of Kickin' Stash, top completed last Thursday and until today unseen by almost everyone in the world. So now, direct to you from its recent engagement hanging off the side of my garage, I give you, "Kickin' Leaves".



This quilt was the second of the two group quilts I was able to make when I was inundated with volunteers to participate in my latest group project/block exchange. For more on that and where this quilt had its beginnings, you can read this post so that I don't send everyone who is painfully familiar with this project screaming from my blog, never to return.

I absolutely love this block and the resulting quilts I've made from it (three so far this calendar year!) because it is a scrap buster of immense proportions. The fabric requirements for each block are so minimal that if you have a 6" x 10"ish piece of fabric, you've already got 1/4 of the block taken care of. The widest of the pieces are only 2 1/2" wide, too, and what does that mean? Even the leftovers from jelly rolls are perfect for this block. Which all means that other than background fabric, you most likely have all the fabric you need and then some to make way too many of these blocks already in your sewing studio.

Suffice it to say that the inundation of block sewing volunteers for my project and their enthusiasm for block making lead to owning way more blocks than I could use in one quilt, so lucky (greedy) me, I got TWO! We can also suffice it to say that this tidbit of incredibly poorly thought out direction-giving: "Any color family will do. Really, I cannot stress enough how little I care which color family you choose" led me to more than one fit of distress as I tried to organize the blocks into two attractive quilts. But I think I did pretty well. (The other group quilt, which is done, bound, and already on the pattern cover can be seen here), along with a bunch of blocks that were sent to me. Again, I don't want to bore anyone who has seen it a million times already!



I love the batik tan I used for the border and spacer blocks. It really sets off all the different creams in the backgrounds of the blocks, and is a great fallish blender color, too. The scraps for the border came from my own scrap stash, and I so love that when I showed it to some guild friends last week one of them gasped and said "Wow - all of the pieces in your border are the same size! I didn't think you ever did that!" Why yes, I don't normally, but now and then one has to prove that they do actually know how to follow a quilting rule or two.

The plan is to get "Kickin' Leaves" quilted at my guild retreat this weekend. But I'm fresh out of good ideas how to quilt the thing. So....got an idea? Please feel free to comment!

Another plan is to make a fourth KS quilt at the retreat, from all blues with a cream background, due to the fact that my blue bucket of scraps was threatening to come to life and smother us all in our sleep. Here's my pile of pieces, ready to go:



Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of the linky party! Always a great excuse to check out some beautiful quilts while getting nothing else done all day.

DaGMT - Day 17 "Spinning Wheels"

I really should take up spinning wool. I hear it's all the rage again, and it would only be one step away from taking up churning butter, which my middle child has suggested would make for a fun winter break activity. I suggested she instead get a job at Sturbridge Village some day and leave the butter churning to the machines God has given us for the love of Pete you 9 year old from 1834 trapped in 2012. She asked if there might be a need for a French chef at Sturbridge once she finishes college. She is an enigma, that one.

Anyway, although I got several things accomplished today, there was some of that dreaded "project so close to done you can taste it...and YET...." wheel spinning. Although Judy was as fab as always and brought me some of the fabric she had after my post yesterday, it was cream on cream rather than white on white, so I couldn't use it. We were both sad and forlorn about the whole thing. Unfortunately it was only noon and I was about to head off to meet with two teachers for conferences, or I'd have gotten out the blender to drown our sorrows.

Then I was off to visit machine quilter #1 with my baby sized "Kickin' Stash" sample, followed by a trip to the fabric store for backing and hopefully another white on white. I did find another white on white which I did not love but by this time I cannot be bothered to care anymore and finished the top, and got the backing put together for my trip to machine quilter #2 tomorrow.

It's lovely to have minions.

Side note - Someday I will invent a machine that creates both backings and bindings magically. I will swim in molten gold forever, and you can all join me because you will have all sorts of time freed up from having to do these mundane quilting tasks. Or you can churn some butter with your free time. Your preference.

I also put the binding on Paige's new bed quilt, which matches the cover girl one Eva will have, except it is in pinks rather than teals. As we can see Eva may be lording her famous quilt over Paige, but Paige is rather enjoying actually being able to touch her quilt at the moment.



Tomorrow I am off to spend the weekend at a local hotel with all of my inlaws for the weekend, and I do not know how I will do as far as project accomplishment from now through Monday evening. But since I started this, I feel I must at least attempt to set a good example. I may need to use creative definitions of sewing, so stay tuned.

But before I go, see that new button right under the DaGMT one on the left side? That will lead you to my friend/twin separated at birth Kelli Fannin's blog - "Seriously....I think that needs stitches" (www.thatlookslikeitneedsstitches.blogspot.com). She's a quilter and nurse and we met when she entered a giveaway of mine last year and I chose her to win because she is me, minus three girls, plus one boy, plus a nursing degree, minus a few years from the look of her photo....but other than that we are the same person. Her blog is way fun, and she's actually doing a giveaway right now of some layer cakes by Moda. Really cute ones too. So check it out and enter!

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.