Quiltville Mail Room!

There is a whole lot of this going on these days--- And when there is a whole lot of this going on, there isn’t a whole lot of anything to show you!

But you know what? It has been very nice to sit here “Home Alone” in the dining-room-turned-shipping-department with music on and just sign and fill orders. I am amazed at how far they will go to reach their destinations! Just yesterday I sent books to Brazil, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, England, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Italy and South Africa! Of course all over the USA too….

I want to go all these places! I want to explore and take pictures and see what life is like there. I don’t want to leave any corners un-turned!

Living in a small-ish cottage type house out in the sticks, there isn’t a lot of room to set up for such a purpose, and cases of books are heavy so I don’t want to be lugging them down to the basement and back up again. I need to be close enough to the front door that I can carry the full bins of bubble envelopes to the car.

I set up a folding table at the edge of the dining room/living room and put my mail tubs there. I have a small one window post office in my town. And I don’t want to over-load them. I print my stamps on Stamps.com to save time standing in line, and to not have a line form behind me. I sort the pre-stamped mail by zipcode in the bins so that when I get the bins to the Post Office they don’t have to take the time to sort it, they just slap a zone paper on the bin and off it goes when the big truck comes to pick it up.

As for the international stuff? That takes some time because of all the carbon copies and the stamping of forms and sticking of said forms on the packages. We have a system! I sort by country, and by what’s in the package ((Either 1, 2 or 3 books etc)) And Jeanette will weigh and print the postage, and I’ll stick it on there. She will stamp the customs forms, and I will tear and separate them into their prospective piles and peel and stick the one sheet to the envelopes. We can go through my mail in record time!

Being at the Post Office is kind of a social thing too! Sherry, The Postmaster, has horses, and I love hearing her stories about their antics and what is going on with them. She also had a “BIG” birthday a few months ago, and came to work in her brand new red corvette. She deserves it! And she looks SO hot in it..LOL! My comment was that it wouldn’t work for hauling my book orders, or my trunk show!

This is how you know you live in a small town:

The other day as we are going through this mail routine of mine, the UPS man comes in and hands Jeanette a package! Of course, it was addressed to her home address, but he knew she worked Wednesdays and brought it to her at the Post Office instead. Isn’t that cool? Gotta love a small town!

So I’ve had a couple quiet evenings at home. And I haven’t sat at a sewing machine in closing in on 3 weeks. How can that be? That will change this weekend. I’m going to sew! My Brother and his wife are having their first baby and I need to get cranking on that baby quilt. That sounds like a Super-Bowl Sunday activity, doesn’t it?

I did get TWO more sections attached to the hexie quilt---Look, the floral border is about 1/2 done now! 3 more to attach. 1 is done, it is my map for piecing the others. 2 has the flowers done, and I’m now attaching them with the white/green hexies. It will take one more trip somewhere to get it done I think…and there will be one more to go, and then I have to figure out what the heck I’m going to do to square this thing off!

Yeah..and you can see that I did NOT unpack the quilt duffels yet! I might get that done today….maybe.

I’ve been having fun with the comments on Yesterday’s post for the Word Play Quilts Give-Away! There is still time to enter. I’m going to draw the winner Saturday ((tomorrow)) so go to Yesterday’s Post and leave your comment!

Time to get back to the Mail Room --- Have a great Friday!

Word Play Quilts Give-Away!

Let’s do this! Let’s give away a copy of Tonya’s book, Word Play Quilts!

I even have a sampling of photos to entice you!

Word Play Quilts Inspiration! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It’s a wonderful book full of terrific techniques, gorgeous quilts made by many of Tonya’s students and followers as well as herself. Let your imagination run wild and piece some words into your quilts! You really DO need this book, yes you do!

What I want from you is a comment on this post telling me what you would like to piece into your next project….be it a word, a date, a phrase, anything. If you could make your next quilt speak, what would it say?

Since I am up to my eyeballs in filling all the book pre-orders for both Word Play Quilts and Scraps & Shirttails II, we’ll give this a couple days to simmer, and I’ll pick a winner on Saturday. How’s that sound?

If you find you can’t wait to win the book and just want to have it, you can order it HERE!

And really….I have had nothing else exciting to write about today and maybe that is a good thing. 4 trips to the post office, errands to get more bubble envelopes at Sam’s club while dropping off Jeff’s prescription at the pharmacy, a massage…bank…

And oh yeah…did I ever tell you that I have a lead foot? Yep. Speeding Ticket. I swear I couldn’t have been going THAT fast…I was just following the lead of the truck in front of me…but evidently I was. What can I say for myself? I hadn’t driven a car in over 17 days. Maybe I forgot how to read the speedometer?

There was no talking myself out of this one, and what makes it worse is that I was on the phone with DH when the lights were flashing behind me…so I had to tell HIM right then too. $171.00. I am not a happy camper! ((PS...I have bluetooth in my car, believe me BOTH hands were on the wheel at the time!))

So maybe this give-away is just what I need to get this ticket off my mind!

Welcome Home!!

Are there WORDS for this?

Are words even necessary for you to understand what this picture is all about and how it makes me feel?

At the end of a very long journey, more than just the past two weeks, more like the journey of the past whole year and even before that ---

Look what I came home to! It’s here! It’s really HERE! And it is even more beautiful than I had hoped for. PDF files just do not do a book justice. You have to hold it in your hands and turn the pages one by one and smell that new-book-smell and study the gorgeous pictures that appear throughout!

And this is how I plan to spend my first evening home after being gone a long long time.

My journey home skirted past all the Midwest Nastiness, having me leave from New Orleans, and arriving in Houston around noon. The best part of that short one hour flight was THIS:

Now THIS is what I call LEG ROOM! I was in the exit row seat 21-F on a 737. Mark this as my favorite seat from now on! Yes, that is my Rick Steves Avanti Rolling Tote pushed clear up under the “seat in front of me” with the featherweight, the kindle, AND the laptop in it. See! It DOES fit!

Like I said…too bad this flight was only an hour long! I could get used to this kind of leg room.

Houston had a small problem. Flights were delayed coming in because of weather starting to happen there. Dallas airport was closed, people were being re-routed, crews pushing to the point of being over worked. Our crew was short a flight attendant. And since the flight from Houston to Greensboro is an express jet flight, there IS only one flight attendant per plane, so this WAS a problem! We left just over an hour late, but we did get out of there.

My flights today were the bumpiest I have ever been on thanks to this weather system, and I was never so glad to touch down on my home turf!

Tonight? I’m not even bothering to unpack my bags. I made a beeline for the hottub. I’m in my jammies. I’m finishing this post and I’m going to thumb through my new book!

Tomorrow? I’ll start filling all the pre-orders in the order that they were received…Orders will start mailing!

Word Play Quilts is here also! I will be in post office mode over the next 10 days that I am home. Thanks so much for your patience with me --- of COURSE the books would show up when I was out of town for two weeks. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles! But I’m doing everything I can to get them out to you ASAP!

I have that copy of Word Play Quilts as a give away….give me a day or so to wrap my head around everything that is undone over here, and we’ll get THAT underway as well!

Playing with Jacks!

It’s my LAST night on this long trip. I’ve been in Louisiana since LAST Monday…..and tomorrow I fly home! It was two weeks ago yesterday ((Sunday)) That I left North Carolina for San Diego and the Road to California Quilt Show in Ontario!

Here is a pic of me that Liz took in California while holding a border section of my hexie project…

I feel like it has been SIX weeks, but at the same time it has flown so fast…each day just cram packed with things to do, places to be, quilts to teach! It’s been a whirl wind of fun, but I am ready, really ready, to go HOME.

With all the storms pending, and due to the fact ((and the remembrance)) of what fun wet luggage is ((NOT!)) We stopped tonight at the Walmart to pick up a can of Scotchguard. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to find, but we were directed from the hardware section to the craft section and finally found it in the laundry aisle. I suppose that makes sense, but never having looked for it before---and considering the fact that this Walmart is Huge---it would have been nice if the FIRST person we asked knew where it was!

The hotel I’m staying in has a patio area, and I’m on the ground floor, so in between bouts of editing photos and writing this post, I’ve been going out there to spray the bags and let them dry in between rounds of spraying.

**Note To Self** Remember to close the sliding glass door while spraying!! This stuff is potent!

I intend to KEEP spraying until the whole can is used up….on not only the quilt bags, but my clothing suitcase as well!

My thoughts and prayers are with those in the path of this winter blizzard---though I have to admit to wonder why the weather channel always shows this as if it starts BELOW the Canadian border, when I know our Canadian friends are being pounded too. It takes me back to Elementary School where we would study the country, the states, and it never appeared as if there WAS anything at all above the USA! Why is this storm a big deal here, when they have bigger ones there? Not to minimize it for anyone that is in the path, it’s just that I am aware of the fact that there is more in the continent of North America than just the USA! Take this picture for instance...see how the storm makes such a CLEAN LINE at the border? LOL! I wish the weather channel would show the whole picture, that’s all.

Be safe everyone, no matter what side of the border you are on! My flight takes me from New Orleans to Houston to Greensboro, so I should be south of the mess.

Packing Packing Packing…and a long travel day home. I’ll be home for 10 days before I have to do a quicky trip fairly locally! I’m headed up to Lexington, VA for a meeting with the Rockbridge Pieceworkers Quilt Guild! That is still not-quite-mid-February, and roads up through Virginia and the south east can get kind of icy so I’m hoping all this nasty stuff is gone before I have to drive it.

So on to today’s workshop! Playing with Jacks is a fun and EASY quilt to get familiar with the Easy Angle Ruler and slow down long enough to solve ANY problems that may have plagued you with your personal seam allowance. We work on that and work on that until we find out WHERE it is with your machine. It can be a boring process, but if you want success in your patchwork, you need to know where it is and how to find it. And consistency is important! Let’s face it….most traditional quilts call for scads and loads of half square triangles, and we want them easy and consistent.

And this brings another question.....why is it that some quilters refuse to clip their dog ears? They obscure my view, and add bulk to corners and junctions. Why is it so hard for people to even want to clip those off? Believe me, your patchwork will lay nicer and be so much easier in the piecing/quilting department if you just trim them off!

From there on we play! The blocks are 6” finished, so you get plenty of repeat across the quilt surface to twist and turn the blocks and form really fun designs. You can choose to add sashings or not, totally changing the look even further. It’s a great study in a 3 fabric (or more) color palette, pushing the boundaries a bit on the color wheel and just experimenting. We had a great time!

		Playing With Jacks 1-31-2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

There might be several pictures from the same projects, I just kept clicking as the projects grew! Look for the Green/Blue/white one where she decided to reverse the triangles and have the anvil block be dominant with the WHITE triangles as the design, instead of the blue ones…making the blue ones be the background. It totally changed the quilt, and we both liked it so much better!

Remember to play and experiment with your blocks. We would cut as many half square triangles as we could from each strip set, and often there are a few left that won’t make a full block, so students were encouraged to make some RENEGADE blocks using the spare parts. This really added interest to the quilt, throwing in a bit of free whimsy and surprise.

Time go to spray another round of Scotchguard ---remembering to close the sliding glass door and not letting all the fumes in the room in the process!