Market Mash-Up

Wow - it's really been almost three weeks since I had a chance to sit down and do a blog post. That is what happens when one goes on vacation four weeks before Market, like a complete idiot, and said vacation turns into a bit of a people version of that movie "Homeward Bound" where the dogs try to find their way across California. In this version, my family of five became trapped in Chicago/en route home for three extra days of a week long trip when we chose to spend spring break in Chicago the same week of the Boston bombings and a 36 hour melee of Midwest weather and flooding that together made it next to impossible to fly between the two cities. So that was fun.

The part of the grumpy cat was alternately played by me and Mr. QH, depending on what the airlines had to tell us at any given moment.

 

There was more than one moment where I wished people really could fly.

 In all seriousness though, I am thankful this was the only "bad" thing that happened to my family last week, as I know plenty of victims of the marathon bombings would be thrilled to have had our trials and tribulations. My thoughts are with all of them as we all struggle to make sense of random evil in our world. I am proud to call Boston home and am glad the world has seen that we really are a people full of heart. Or haaaht. Either way, you have to admit we totally rock a National Anthem.

Since we had arranged for the post office to start delivering our mail again on Thursday, but didn't get home until Sunday evening, I must take this moment to thank the 11 year old girl across the street for bringing us three loads of mail via her bike and backpack like an adjunct member of the USPS last night. Most exciting to me was a parcel containing this fabric from Art Gallery:

I. Love. Them. And Art Gallery as they are the nicest people ever.

 I have actually already whipped them into most of a quilt top today. I needed a smaller version of "Garden's Gate" for my booth at Market, as it is the smallest booth one can get (ie "Barbie's Dream Booth"), so this one will be gorgeous and modern and not take up an entire wall.

Look at me go. It's more fun than laundry, after all.

 In other mail news, I also received two enormous boxes from Smartpress.com, my favorite printers, and I now officially have all of my patterns in paper form and after a stuffing festival of immense proportions this evening, I will be ready to ship all the paper products to my Portland hotel. Yay! Checking things off the list!

All I can say is Castle better be good tonight to alleviate the horror of stuffing 9 million patterns.

Having now exhausted the theme of what I got in the real mail while I was gone, let's move on to the ever popular topic of "What I got in my email that was exciting and Market related" today.

1. Room C121, 1:55pm on May 16. Be there for my Schoolhouse Presentation "Kickin' Stash and Taking Names." Woo hoo!
2. This cool badge so I can post it on things (like my blog, my FB page, and even I suppose my forehead if I wanted to) and remind everyone of my commitment to twice in a month fly across America and hope to God I make it home again, as apparently this is no longer a given when flying in 2013.

It's quite official, no?

  3. And just now, while I was madly typing away, Market Slave East Renae Mathe sent me a photo of the new Sunflower and Sky sample I begged her to make for me out of a pile of purple and yellow batiks I handed her at school pickup one day. Squeee! Moral of the story - don't offer to help me or you will get a job.

She claims it is better in person, which I am sure it is, but I am loving it even now. In large part because I didn't have to make it.

Did I make my mail sound as exciting as yours? One can hope.

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.