Come On and Get Your Teal On

As advertised in the previous post, the Teal Mini Swap is upon us!

Who can resist a fun little gift in the mail, am I right?

Every year I do my darnedest to kick ovarian cancer to the curb and pounce on it with my stiletto thigh high boots. Mr Quilting Hottie wishes. That was supposed to read adorable sandals. But either way, if we make it a little more dead, it's good. If we make it a little more in the public eye through awareness, also really good. If we get a fun gift in the mail too? That's just the trifecta of awesomeness right there.

All the info you could ever need along with the sign up form is all to be found over HERE; just read and scroll and hit the button that says register now and you will be directed exactly what to do. It really is that simple. Along about August 29 I will start mailing out swap partners and the lovely Blank Fabrics focus fabric you are to use in your mini, and then it's all you and your creativity and stamping out ovarian cancer.

Registrations are open and I'm thrilled to report that I already have just about exceeded the number of registrants in all of last year, and we still have 2 weeks to go before they close. My other, sillier goal is always to try to get at least one participant from each state. To me that just seems a great indication that we are getting the word out not only about the swap, but about ovarian cancer awareness. I'm thrilled to say that so far we are at 31 states, and are a long way to turning the map teal!

Looking good! Who knows quilters who hate cancer in AK and HI? There must be some!

So,  are you a sewist? Do you hate ovarian cancer? Do you want to meet new people and get a cool gift? Wait no more....head on over to the Teal Mini Swap group on FB, and if I haven't convinced you to sign up, that group of enthusiastic teal lovers will!

Two for Teal Registration Open!

It's HERE!

Signups started at 12:00am 8/15/14. If you are on the west coast, you can even sign up after 9:00pm tonight. And I'm writing this post the morning of 8/14, and scheduling it to post in the future, and the whole thing is just making me feel very much in tune with my inner time-traveling Sassenach.

You know I never miss an opportunity for an Outlander shout out.

So time to register and start planning your mug rugs! Please read all the info and fine print on the registration form, and refer to the previous post for even more specifics. I have a ridiculous goal in mind for our OCRF donation, but if I reach it it will be worth the administrative nightmare it causes for sure!

If you plan to participate, make sure you check out and join the Two for Teal Mug Rug Swap 2014 open group on Facebook as well. Any member can post photos of the mug rugs as you receive them or ovarian cancer awareness or questions or anything appropriate. You'll definitely want to get in on the action!

If you didn't hit one of those links to register already, you also can do so right from the left hand sidebar over there <------. Just be careful to sign up for Two for Teal and not the Round Robin in a  Day - unless you want to do both! I'd be thrilled! But with two events going at once I just want to make sure you sign up for the right thing!

Can't wait to get started with all of you!

Summer Survival

It's the third week of summer vacation, and while I must pat myself on the back for the zillionth time over my way more awesome than usual summertime attitude this year, I also must admit that I am very ready for dance and drama camps to start next week.

Very. Very. Ready.

It's been almost three weeks since I logged in to post here, and for that I deeply apologize. This apology is thrown out there in the assumption that you even noticed in your own summer whirlwind crazies.

My biggest excitement of the summer arrived in my inbox while I stood in line at an amusement park the first Monday of summer vacation - an enthusiastic invitation to be the featured speaker at Tucson Quilt Fiesta 2016! WHAT? Tucson? Me? Really? I don't even know how to spell Tucson and I messed it up EVERY SINGLE TIME on the contract that I forced myself to wait three days to send so as not to appear overeager and desperate for the love of a group somewhere decidedly outside of my region. I'm still blown away. Anyone got a good source for cowboy boots?

I hope they'll all be wearing socks under their boots, so I can knock them off.

  The next big excitement came from Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics, who graciously agreed without even making me beg to be my sponsor for the second annual "Two for Teal" mug rug swap. What does that mean? Basically that not only will their fabric be the one everyone gets as a focus piece to use in the mug rug, but also each participant will receive a coupon code for their online shop equal to the amount of the donation to OCRF required for participation. So really you get two amazing prizes for the price of one - the joy of donating to a cause that hopefully will save many a life, and the ecstasy of fabric shopping with a big fat coupon.

Have you seen these fabrics? They are to dye for. hee hee

I'm working out all the details and making some (I think) cool changes to how the swap will be run, and will be announcing all of them along with the opening of sign ups by mid-August. For now, if you want a taste of how last year's swap went, check out the blog post announcing sign ups 2013 and the flickr group where we shared our mug rugs. I really hope you'll want to participate this year so we can help kick ovarian cancer to the curb and then run it over with the car because it deserves nothing less than the worst we can give it.

 Now let's revisit my list of summer projects from my previous post and either end up feeling triumphant or depressed:

1. Secret plans I refuse to divulge because I will likely be rejected soundly and then I will just be embarrassed. - I actually did this yesterday. All we can say at this point is "We'll see how hard they laugh."
2. Get Quilty Pleasures blog post done for Goose Poop. My reveal day is 7/11. May the poop be with you.  - Also done. Wow, two for two! Also I believe my mention of the word "poop" on my FB page cost me a fan or two. Which I just find entertaining.

3. Smack these HST blocks into quilt/new pattern for my new lecture, debuting in May 2015, about my Scrap Squad experiences and consequent inspirations. - Here is the stumbling point. I have several times sat down to sew, only to be interrupted almost immediately (literally 48 seconds later, at one point) by a child who couldn't find her shoes, which I then tried to assist her in finding by helpfully suggesting various locations throughout the house where we often see shoes hiding that she could go look, only to have her come back in tears because they were "Gone! They are just GONE!", and finally being dragged from my seat after three blocks of stitching to find the shoes sitting in the exact spot of the mudroom I told her to look. At that point a gin and tonic always seemed more appropriate than going back to the basement studio.

I'm rejoicing in the little progress I see here.

 4. Finish quilting this sucker. - Yep. Haven't even touched it. With needle and thread or a lint brush.

Also, a lint brush would be a good idea.

5. Send this Modern Instabee block to its new owner. Remember to make time for July and August blocks too. - This is a fine example of "Put something on your list just so you can cross it off." It may have been sent already when I wrote that. Haven't started July or August yet, though.

I'm not adding "lint roll design wall" to the list. We all know I won't do it anyway.

6. Scrap Squad project #4 will be due in September or maybe late August. It's a doozy, but an attractive doozy, and I plan to do some out of the box things to it. My main concern is that I need to remember to work on it as it hasn't been started and therefore is not lying in pieces all over my sewing room reminding/taunting me every time I walk in of its very existence. - It is actually started! This is my main project for camp weeks, and I hope to have it done as soon as my daughters are all camped out.

7. If time permits, get top done for this, even though I'm all annoyed that the idea I had for this quilt just showed up in a new book. Great minds, not enough ways to set circle blocks, I guess. So it's back to the design drawing board as far as what I am going to do with these blocks. - This may or may not be still lying in the exact same spot on the floor of the studio. My toenails are now sporting a lovely shade of dark periwinkle, though, so times have changed slightly.

Hi pretty and coordinating with my blocks toes.

8. Various marketing sorts of things to stay on top of or I'll be dead in the water in September. Or more accurately, January. - Definitely. As sad as it can be, marketing often has to take priority over actual sewing in this business, and summer is definitely when this is most evident to me.

So three weeks, two items down, lots to go but some definite progress. While I can't say I can't complain, I guess I shouldn't so I won't.

Now I'm off for today's exciting adventures, including a trip to the dump and berry picking and pie baking. I promise to wash my hands after the dump or the pies might be especially flavorful.

Mug Rug Swap culminates in Snack Time!

What's better than a mug rug? A mug rug covered in snack.

So the Two/Tea for Teal Mug Rug Swap and Fundraiser (much like my calendar issue of the previous post, I was having apparently having problems settling on one name for this one), and I really could not be happier with how it all turned out. Once all the stragglers and extra donations were counted, close to $150 was raised for OCRF, and for the first time out I think that is very respectable. I thank everyone who participated for your creativity in your mug rugs and your cheerful willingness to raise awareness. We'll do it again next September for sure - I'm already on the hunt for some good theme fabric!

For those unfamiliar, the Two for Teal swap required participants to pay $5 for a little piece of this fabric


and use all or part of it to create a mug rug and send it off to another participant. If the fabric was just not to one's taste (and I will admit, I don't love it myself, but it was a great one for Tea for Teal, no?), it could be used on the back. $3.50 from each participant fee was donated to OCRF, and the remaining $1.50 each was used to pay for the fabric and postage.

If you've been keeping up with checking out the flickr group, you've seen how fantastic these rugs are, and you'll have to click on over to see most of them because the photos are copyrighted and I can't grab them to show you. They are well worth a glance! Really! Go! Now! Then come back!

The the first of the two rugs I made for my partners was quite literally thrown together in about 15 minutes without ever picking up my rotary cutter or scissors as all of these little fabric scraps were lying all over my cutting table at the conclusion of a recent project. Rather than throw them all away, I simply gathered them up and started crazy piecing them together. I may or may not have crawled under my sewing table searching for a few stray scraps of these purples to cut the teal a bit. It was really fast and easy and I just love how it turned out. This rug was sent to Rebecca in Mississippi, who made me feel very special by making "Thankyouthankyouthankyou" the subject line of her email. She also had this to say about the swap itself: "I do try something new with each swap ~ this time was a bigger paper-piecing project. Thank you, too, for putting this swap together. I really enjoy making a surprise for someone else (and receiving a surprise, too!)" 

 I very much like her attitude, and am thrilled that it is living with someone who loves it.

My other swap partner, Sue in New Jersey, has a friend who has a stepdaughter who is currently undergoing OC treatment. For her I decided to create something slightly more meaningful than a pile of scraps pulled off the floor, and created this original, albeit simple, design. It's just some machine applique and echo quilting, but the message is important. The "Hope For a Cure" Mug Rug is available as a download from my Craftsy store for $2.50, and every month I will donate half of all proceeds from its sale to the American Cancer Society. It is my hope that the ribbons on the mug rugs made from this pattern will be all colors, not just teal, and that we can help end this fight just by sewing for twenty minutes or so.

So far I have received a rug (pictured above featuring my yummy muffin, which I am not ashamed to admit is now completely gone, and had you been here with me I would have given you one as well and you would have asked for the recipe) from Amanda from TX, who blogs at What the Bobbin?, which is a name that really just kind of cracks me up. It is the perfect size and shape for right next to my laptop, where I am chained lately writing my next pattern, and I love it. Amanda loves to run swaps on her blog, too, so check her out!

And no blog post of late can be complete without a foray into the bowels of my Aiming for Accuracy project, to see if the latest step toward its completion has improved the look of it in the slightest. In a nod to my southern hotties, I think we can all agree that the answer is still a firm "Bless her heart."

Ever my biggest fans, my daughters are still saying it is going to be a pretty quilt to have around at Christmas, but I'm thinking they may be hedging their bets that to say otherwise would reduce the present pile significantly.


Will I love it more when the final section is on? A better question would be will I love it at all at that point. Sigh.

Back to pattern writing I go. If you are a fan on Facebook, you've seen a preview and you may have helped me kick myself in gear with all the love you threw around for it, and I thank you. If you aren't, maybe you need to check it out over there. The goal is to have the pattern done in a couple of weeks - we'll see! The best news is I have THE BEST name for it, but it is staying supersecret until the thing is out. But feel free to guess.

Still "Aiming for Accuracy" and sometimes even succeeding, but mostly not

So to review, the kids have been back in school for two weeks and despite my best efforts my next pattern is still up on the design wall. In good news, so is the famous Daisy petal, which is now joined by a host of other Girl Scout badges and patches, all of which hang on the wall mocking my very existence every time I sit down at the sewing machine.

I think they multiply at night.

 

 

Here's hoping no one has been waiting with bated breath to see the next blocks I have completed in the Aiming For Accuracy QAL, because if so you would have long ago expired. Note that having exhausted myself trying to figure out if it was Quiltalong or Quit-a-long or Quilt-along, I am now simply using an acronym like the good wife of an ex-Air Force captain that I am. But if somehow you have managed to use your superhuman powers to stay alive for 6 weeks while holding your breath, I invite you to let it out as you may well need it to gasp in horror.

It isn't just the bad lighting. It really is pretty ugly.

Even the cute little deer in the center of that bottom star can't make this work for me.

 The whole QAL, which despite my above efforts has actually been rather fun, has been broken into "Lessons" each week, covering all sorts of topics designed to help quilters improve their accuracy and point-making skills, with a block to complete after the lesson. I've learned a ton, and have been completely won over by the idea of pressing seams open when you need to join points. Holy cow it really is like a million times more accurate. So I am thrilled with how I'm mostly making some technically close-to-perfect blocks. Which is as close to perfect as I am comfortable getting.

But the biggest lesson I have learned is that these fabrics, cute as they are, were utterly and completely the wrong choice for this project. As we may recall, I bought them on a whim at Sample Spree in Portland, not really knowing what I would do with them, and since there were 24 of them and I needed 24 for this project, it just seemed like a good choice to use the fabric bundle. Well, it was not. There is a decided lack of contrast in value amongst them, which sucks when I try to pick fabrics that are going to show the block designs to their full potential.

Then there is the lack of differences in scale of prints, all of them being in about the 1 1/2" to 2 1/2"  scale which makes them look really flat and muddy when they are put together. And the directionals! For the love of all that is holy, the directionals! Add in the fact that I had to have been somewhat tipsy or something when I chose the light blue as my contrast fabric, and the whole thing just makes me a little bit sad.

Was it Debbie Gibson who sang that song "Could have been so beautiful....could have been so right..."? Thankfully it may still help me out "on a cold and lonely night" or all would be lost. #80slyricsstuckinmyheadnow

 So let's move on to happier moments in quilting....the Two for Teal Mug Rugs! I am so thrilled by the photos I am seeing so far even as I await my own delights' arrivals in my mailbox. Check out the flickr as it is growing daily! I'm very happy to say that in this first year of the swap, we were able to raise $115 for OCRF, plus we are having a lot of fun. Aren't you sad you didn't join? There is always next year, hotties.

I'll be shipping this one off to a participant tomorrow. Being the lazy quilter that I am, I loved that all I did was scoop up a pile of scraps left over from last week's project and throw them together. Never even picked up my rotary cutter.

Doesn't stippling always look better when it is small? It's one of those great mysterious truths of quilting.

The back, to prove I used the swap fabric.

Sowing Bliss

Last night I was reading to my seven year old, who still cannot read any book with an actual plot by herself, and the literary choice of the evening was "Spookley the Square Pumpkin." For those not familiar with this bit of annoyingly rhymey childhood wonderment, it is the story of a farmer who sows his pumpkin patch as usual one year and gets a square pumpkin in amongst the rest of the average globular ones. As you might imagine, Spookley is ostracized from the pumpkin patch until he saves the day during a storm in which three pumpkins fall from a cliff into the sea before Spookley can wedge his square self into the hole in the fence, saving the rest of the patch and becoming the Citizen of the Year whose seeds are then coveted to sow future generations of life-saving pumpkin heroes who come in various shapes, sizes, and every color of the rainbow. I'm always a bit distressed that we never find out the fate of those three cliff-diving pumpkins, and also have never reconciled the wisdom of sowing a pumpkin patch on a cliff by the sea, but what do I know?

You know you want to choose it for your next book club meeting.

In any case, what I loved about this particular "Reading Snuggle Time" was that Greta, upon hearing the word "sow" over and over, and only knowing the "sew" form of this set of homophones, and putting the word "sow" together with the different colors and shapes of Spookley's offspring, turned to me and said "Mom! I think the farmer is a quilter like you! He's sewing all these different colored pumpkins together into a beautiful pumpkin patch."

How do you not want to refuse to send a kid to school so that she will never learn to read on her own when you get that kind of adorable brilliance?

But back to school the girls have trod, and back to work I go, stumbling down the basement stairs each morning to sew my face off as I try to catch up on all sorts of design work that had to be lain by the wayside of summer break. It's a different kind of sewing bliss than the type sown in long lazy days with my girls, but almost equally fabulous as I am well aware of how lucky I am to be able to enjoy my hobby as a career, even as the balance sometimes makes me feel like I need to be superhuman to do it all.

Then I remember that I am superhuman, so it all works out.

The Two for Teal Mug Rug Swap is officially underway! I am thrilled to have gathered 30 participants (well, 29. Plus me.) from all over the country who now should have in hand their fabric and assigned swap partner. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with to enhance tea time. (Ah! Tea Time! Another bliss moment of the school year.) $105 was raised and has been donated to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Thank you all for your support of awareness of this ridiculous disease.

To prove I am getting back to work, some extreme closeups of projects you will see in pattern form soon:

These fabrics just scream "I'm Yummy!" and I am having trouble resisting the temptation to lick them.

Project pulled from UFO heap, sort of seeing some potential to actually give it another shot. But not in these fabrics. Good Lord Almighty.

Now and then I think "I must move away from this color palette." But then I regain my senses.

 

 

Keep sowing!