Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Nice things

Crazy Shortcut Quilt Book Publicity

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Oh happy news! While at Quilt Market in Portland
Sarah and I did a demo in our publishers’ booth (Krause Publications) for about an hour or so. When I had checked in earlier I had noticed that a quilt from our book (Sweet Sixteen Quilt) was on the cover of the new Krause Catalog. I was thrilled and walked around showing everyone! Hehehehe. Anyway, I must have made quite an impression on one of my favorite folks at Krause (Laura Miller in Marketing) because today I received another catalog in the mail from Laura. Here’s what her note said

“M – thought you would really enjoy this catalog too. It’s last summer’s consumer quilt catalog….it’s your quilt too.”

She is just too sweet for words! The cover of the catalog (on the left) has Sarah’s Moda quilt “Bright Idea” on it and the back cover of the catalog has our book and my ugly hands!

Fabrics from Spring Quilt Market

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I let Sarah do my fabric shopping for me and here’s what she chose:
a beautiful collection of soft earthy colors called “Victoria” by Benartex
and a nice set of complementary fabrics by Andover (the lighter fabrics) and Quilt Gate (the darker maroon colored fabrics). It is absolute heaven to have a “fabric advisor” that I can trust! Now I just need to decide which quilts to make and who gets them….fun!

We made the Catalog Cover!

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I am back from Quilt Market in Portland and what an experience! Sarah and I had an awesome time at Market and even though she did all the hard work (and she did a spectacular job!) I am the one who is exhausted! How did that happen? LOL

I am a behind-the-scenes kind of person so I did all the prep work for the demo and then Sarah does all the talking at the demo and she really makes the quilters happy. She received lots and lots of compliments about her demos and when we were all done showing off, we walked the aisles of Market together. She was looking specifically for organics and eco-friendly products and I was looking for info for another blog that I write called “Quilt News“. With only 2 exceptions, we were happily received by all. Sarah will be back tomorrow and will probably post about her finds on her blog. I’ll post again with photos of fabrics and a few other tidbits from Market.

We started off on Saturday morning with a bang when we realized that our publisher, Krause Publications, has a photo our our very own quilt on the cover of their Spring 2008 catalog. Yayyyyyy!

Crazy Shortcut Quilt

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I just received an email that made a very sad day so much better! There was a tragic accident with some of my free roaming bunnies, and my heart has been heavy for days. Then I received this message and photo:

Marguerita,

I thought I’d share some pictures with you and Sarah on my first attempt at making one on the quilts in your book. I’m sure it won’t be the last. I had a blast!

Julie

I am going to put her photo on our website, along with quilts from Sarah’s recent class. Wasn’t it so sweet of Julie to send us her photo? Thanks Julie!

Almost Spring

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I begin to believe that spring is almost here when the daffodils start coming up. We still have several feet of snow in the yard, but around the house it’s melting out.

The poor things have to fight their way through the masses of snow we received this winter – but up they come!

I can hardly believe that they push up through the snow pack!

There were even some dandelion shoots and I picked a few for bunny. His first spring treat 🙂 He just loves dandelions!

Etsy

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I’ve been playing with electrons again. This time helping a gal fix her blog ring. We’re getting to know each other via email and blogs, and every day I learn something new about her. She has a very funny email address and whenever she emails me I laugh out loud; she has pet rabbits living in her studio (just like me); she’s quite generous and kind and she’s got some cool stuff in her Etsy Shop called Littleputbooks.

If you have never been to Etsy, well, all I can say is “pour a cuppa, you’re going to be there awhile”.

My friend Holly Knott has a shop there too. But don’t just stop with these two, use the search engine and take a look around the Rodeo Drive of the internet.

Sharing Information on Squidoo.com

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I am, at times, overwhelmed with what is available for free on the internet. Squidoo is interesting to me because they give you a nicely formatted place to share information on subjects that you are passionate about – and they give you a choice of donating any profits from the page you create to charity.

I am pretty passionate about some aspects of quilting and I like to share information for free and I am a firm believer in helping others. Squidoo.com looks like a good fit for me. Unlike a blog, where after about a week a post is lost in Label/Archive limbo – my topic is always there, easy to find and always available for anyone looking for it. That’s kind of neat 🙂

If you are passionate about a subject and you want to share it with the internet world, head on over there and create what they call a ‘lens’. Here’s mine on different machine quilting systems.

Quilting Tools that I Love

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I just love anything that makes my sewing and quilting easier, and these 2 things do exactly that: Joan Hawley’s Tips DVD and Prym-Dritz curved nickel pins in a size 1.

The first time I saw Joan at Quilt Market, with her booth & business sign that said “Lazy Girl” I stopped in my tracks. Here was a woman I could relate to! I watched her Tips DVD yesterday and it renewed my respect for Joan and my love of her tips. This DVD is mostly about zippers (she uses them in quite remarkable ways on several of her handbag patterns). Lots of sewers are afraid of zippers and Joan removes all the stupid rules I learned in home-ec, back when girls had to take home economics and girls had to wear skirts and dresses to public school (I’m old!). Joan’s DVD shows how to put in zippers faster than putting on a binding, and easier too.

While I was watching the DVD I was also doing the boring task of pinning my squares for a new quilt. I had a few bad pins and I opened up a brand new package of Prym Pins. Heaven. Bad pins are worse than useless (into the scrap bin they went) because they pull at the fabric and distort the smoothness I worked so hard to get! These new pins were smooooooth and sweet and between them and watching Joan, made a boring task better.

BTW, if you like the background fabric on the pins photo, it’s Cherrywoods hand dyed fabric from their ‘Chestnut to Light’ colorway. That’s what I am working on now.

Laughter

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Audrey loved her new hat and although it is a bit big, it wasn’t too big, it just has room to grow. We had dinner together, Sarah, Ryan, Tom, Audrey and I and it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. Audrey likes to take my jewelry and for some reason she decided that removing my eyeglass holder chain was the funniest thing in the world. She laughed, and I laughed just to see her laugh and then we were both laughing just because the other one was. Life just doesn’t get any better than that.