Winners and a Flimsy

There were 133 comments, plus 2 personal emails from friends who don't feel comfortable writing a comment but do follow me.  I assigned numbers to those friends based on the time their emails came in.  One was #1; she immediately sent me a comment via email the night before the post went live when I told her to watch for the giveaway the next day.  So she was #1.  That meant everyone from comment #1 on was bumped ahead a number.  My other friend's email came in at 2:41 PM on May 17, so I assigned her #54.  Therefore everyone after #54 is bumped ahead by two numbers.  Follow?

The first winner of a signed copy of Lara's book was #77, which, because of the two emails meant I'd go to #79, which is Helen of Midget Gem Quilts! I had to draw a couple of times for this as the first draw was a no-reply blogger.  :-(

Helen wrote:

We'll let you, the reader, figure out who her sassy bloggy friend is...

The second winner of the pattern for the dogs/cats wallhanging or pillow if you do like I did, was #125, but I went to #127, again because of the two email entries.  Congrats Marly of Marly's Quilts! We've read each other's blogs many times and each thought we were following the other, but nope we weren't, but now we are, LOL.

Marly wrote:

I've emailed both Helen and Marly.  Thank you to all who entered, thank you to those of you who are now following me, and woot! woot!  early Sunday evening I got an email from bloglovin' (drum roll).... mmm! quilts now has just passed 200 followers!  Holy Dinah!  I feel another giveaway looming.  Stay tuned!

Speaking of gifts, I recently received two fat quarter bundles.  TWO!

This 'n That by Nancy Halvorsen and Fleurish by Maria Kalinowski, two designers whose previous fabrics (and  book of Nancy's) I already own!

I was blown away.  A couple of months ago I had downloaded and read the first edition of Benartex's new e-magazine, "Modern By the Yard".  Love it.  If you do not know about this GENIUS idea for a totally green magazine, go to their blog, which I love, Sew In Love With Fabric, (because I am, ha...aren't we all??!)  Click on the link on the sidebar.  Anyhow somewhere they asked if you would send them five friends' emails who you think would love the magazine, they'd send you a gift.  I sent them seven in the blink of an eye.  Totally forgot about it.  Then these arrived with a lovely note of thanks.  My mouth fell open in amazement.  I am so grateful that they would DO that!

Now to dream up a quilt or project with these beauties...  Thank you Benartex peeps!  (Sidenote: did you take part in their Find that Fabric contest this past weekend during Market? I did faithfully.  Found a ton of new fabrics I'm itching to get my hands on...but no, sniff, I didn't win, even though I correctly named each swatch.)

Speaking of Nancy Halvorsen, a piece of her early fabric, the pink berries on green leaves one, is in my aunt's quilt that my mum asked me to make for her to take with her to England.  Here is the flimsy, measuring 31.5X37.5".   The border fabric and the parchment-coloured triangles were bought at O' Susannah's Quilts and Gifts in Watkins Glen, when my good friend Janette and I were quilt shopping while our husbands, along with dear friend John, were at the racetrack.  See Janette?  I knew it would find a home somewhere down the road!  It's Provincial by Iron Orchid Designs for Clothworks, and I have enough left for another project. ;-)

Not sure I will mail this to my mum in Alberta (it has to get there by Friday) or to my mum care of my uncle in England.  The flimsy is done and I'll be quilting it up tonight on the longarm.  Bella will be ECSTATIC to have me back downstairs in our basement sewing/cat heaven.  I let her perch on the plywood that MacGyver clamped to the dining table for my OTT-lite today for a little bit, as she so loves to sit beside the machine.

She didn't stay there too long, but I think I'll move her cat pouffé there and she might change her mind.  She's not allowed on the table, so this might not be such a good idea...

Linking up with Cooking up Quilts.

Suh-weet!

I've been absent from QBL for a bit, but that's because I'm down at our Florida home for 10 days, where my mum and aunt joined me for 8 of them.  These two "wins" were waiting for me when I arrived!

The charm square pack is what I won from Stitches 'n Giggles in the July ALYOF hosted by Sew Bittersweet Designs.  I love Zen Chic designs; I made Pocketful of Sunshine with Sphere.  :-)  I finally remembered to spend more time on her site, and MAKE A DECISION!

Fleurologie

So I'm writing from my dismantled sewing room/guest bedroom in our Florida condo.  We are down here for about 10 days to pack up, put our stuff in storage and do some house-hunting.  Easy-peasy.  Lemon squeezy.

So far so good; all is going tickety-boo.  And guess what was sitting, waiting for me, smiling in the Florida sunshine at my door when we arrived?!

This!!

I won!  Woot! Woot!  At the beginning of September, Sept. 2-13, to be exact, Moda ran a blog tour,  "The Moda Love Blog Tour" where each day three designers wrote a post about things they love.  They also showed off their newest fabric lines by making the Moda Love quilt.  You can download the quilt if you click on "Stephanie's post" below.  Each designer had a giveaway.  This was during the week Brady and Brianne were visiting, but on a couple of the mornings before I heard his little feet padding along the floor, right after he oh-so-carefully-and-quietly closed the door to the bedroom he and his mommy were sharing, I was able to visit some of the blogs.  I visited Stephanie's blog on the very day they arrived, Sept. 3.

Each designer asked a question about what you love, or what your favourite pre-cut is, etc. Well, on Stephanie's post, that day, I wrote:

And I was chosen!  So Brady brought me good luck. Stephanie wrote me such a nice note inside the pretty card.  Very personal touch.

I just think this is so "wee-ooh, wee-ooh" because my round robin quilt I have been agonizing over all spring and summer got named "fleurs" (small f) and here I've won some fabric named "fleurologie" and it was on the day Brady arrived.  Now... what to make??

And yet another most splendiferous event happened:
I'm being quoted (I wanted to bust a gut laughing that someone would want to do that) in the introduction of my friend Lara's (BuzzinBumble) first and upcoming new book.  Wait for it....sit down....swallow if you are chewing something, or having a drink so you don't spit it out when you read what my comment was about...

AAACK-pliqué!!!

Too hilarious.  I guess she loved what I wrote on August 28:

3.  My friend, Lara, who blogs at BuzzinBumble, has just found out that a book she has been working on is going to be published by the American Quilters' Society!  Congrats, Lara!  It's a new method of "aaaack"-pliqué, so I will have to check it out and turn the way I say it in my head to "ahhh-pliqué", said with a sigh of contentment.  Normally, I don't mind appliqué, but this quilt was pretty intense.  So, I'm interested, as her method is raw-edge appliqué, whereas mine was all edge-turned, except for the "fleurs" word.

and she's incorporating this into her book introduction!  EEEK!

Speaking of loving what a blogger writes, check out this post from The Bitchy Stitcher.  I LOOOVE her made-up review of the book "A Quilt to Remember". Laugh-snorted out loud, and I needed to do that as I'm having a bit of a panic attack with all that's going on in my usually peace-filled condo.  Sniff.  Headed to the pool for some vitamin D, sweat (it's 91 and humid), cool waters and a read.