Wednesday, April 30, 2014

It's Here! It's Here!

Okay, so it's been here 5 days already. This has been my first chance to post about it.
We picked up my book from the printer on Friday. I had to pop a few in the  mail right away and I had a class that afternoon and then I was fortunate enough to get a little  last minute space at the Mukwonago Crazy Quilters annual quilt show on Sat. and Sun.. And then, well, you know how it goes.


 This is what you will be looking for in the shops. Be sure to ask your local quilt shop. They in turn will ask their distributors and then they will ask me for it. That would be a good thing. I sure don't want to loose money on this project.
I am not planning to arrange a blog tour, but if any of my faithful readers with a blog would like to post a positive review about The Thitysomething Block Book, please contact me. I am sure I can arrange a bonus of some kind. I know the publisher very well.


I still have to update my website but if you can't wait you can send me a check. The book retails at $23.99. If you want the Square Up tool that's another $10. don't forget to throw in a few more for postage.

I'd like to say with the book out of the way I can move onto other things. But since I self published, I will be busy selling it. And with spring here I want to get outside and work while I can. A few classes over at Studio Three will keep me busy. I sure hope I find SOME time to sew.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Just 8 seams

I just love being so busy. It's the associated stress that I can do without. Stress as in my baggage didn't arrive until 20 minutes before I needed it for the first lecture scheduled in California. Surprisingly I wasn't too worried about it but there was still stress. And stress as in my return flight encountered more turbulence than I ever want to encounter again. Me thinks I'd be happy to drive even 10 hours to distant guilds - for a while at least. I always did like road trips like that. Surprisingly it becomes a bit painful gripping the steering wheel for so long.  With Mark retired now, perhaps he would be interested in  joining me.
And from what I hear, self-pubishing is not for sissy's. There is plenty of stress associated with that too. Book 9 should be in my hands by next weekend. Finally.
Last night when the girls were over for quilting, I stitched all of 8 seams. It felt so good. We laughed about how therapeutic our get togethers are. Any sewing we get done is a bonus.
  The 8 seams are the 4 to attach the borders and the 4 mitered corners on this quilt top. Sue made it but didn't add the borders before she realized that she didn't want to quilt it. Then she thought if it were smaller she would quilt it, so she removed one whole round of blocks. At that point she donated it to our church group. It was unanimous that the other round of blocks should be reattached and since she already cut the border, it should also be added. Guess who got elected to do that. It took me a while only partially because I had to close up a bunch of loose seams on two edges of the quilt and 2 rows that needed to be reattached.  Well, thanks Sue. I know it will be my job next to locate fabric for the back and get it quilted. That's okay though, cause I really don't need another quilt and I do want to quilt - even though I haven't been doing much of that at all this year.
Close-ups are nice for checking the fabrics that were used. For a better view, double clicking on the photo should enlarge the photo even more.

Next up I think I will add the blue border to the Delectable Mountains quilt top I made last year.

And thank you to the California Quilters that invited me to meet with them. It was an absolutely wonderful trip. And everyone was so friendly, too. I like when that happens.