Jelly Roll Dream Challenge Giveaway - 12 winners

FIRST PRIZE is $2,500 and a JANOME Horizon MC7700QCP sewing machine.

SECOND PRIZE is $1,500 and a JANOME MC4900QC sewing machine.

THIRD PRIZE is $1,000 and a JANOME JP760 sewing machine.

Wow!  What a cool contest.  I'm excited, so I know all of you have to be excited.  Because you're all so talented, and uber creative.  So when I stumbled onto this contest, my immediate thought?  Holy Cow!  Those are some awesome gifts they're giving away.  And then when I read the rules of the contest, I was blown away.  Want to hear the rules?  Ummm...okay.

Design and make a quilt making the best use of a jelly roll.  You can use MODA jelly rolls, other manufacturer's jelly rolls, or cut your own.  Additional background and border fabric is allowed up to a combined quantity of 3 yards (2.75 metres).  There are a couple more rules you'll see at the link listed below, but everything is soooo simple.

Submit your entry form along with a maximum of five photographs of your patchwork top with notes and instructions on how to make it as well as your entry fee of $25.  Didja get that?  Your quilt "top".  In addition to the prizes below, finishing and quilting of your quilt top is part of the prize.  You can enter as many times as you want.  Deadline for entries:  June 1, 2011.  Winners will be revealed July 31st.  And...squeal......Winners will also be published in a future F & W Book.  Now how awesome is that???

Now for the what you've been waiting for...TA-DA!  Here is where you can read all the details.   Whatcha waiting for?  Ladies and Gentlemen... START YOUR ENGINES!!  Uh, start your machines.  Start sewing.  Put the medal to the metal.  Get those creative juices going.   Jelly Roll Dream Challenge Giveaway

Just One Star

While reading the Moda The Cutting Table newsletter I came across a challenge from Moda called Just One Starcan comfort a soldier. "The Moda challenge is to piece, quilt and bind 100 quilts in 100 days using the Flag of Valor pattern by Minick and Simpson." Moda needs 1800 star blocks to reach this goal. The deadline for star blocks is May 1, 2011 so that they can meet their quilt deadline by Flag Day, June 14, 2011. You send completed blocks to Moda at the address in the link.

There is a tutorial/pattern for stars. Won't you consider making one...or two...or more?

I've always been patriotic - red, white, and blue always touch my heart.  I work for another agency now, but 30 years of my career was spent as a civilian for Department of the Army.  I spent 7 of those years in Europe working for the Army, and saw first-hand the sacrifice these men and women make for our country.  I saw entirely too many of injured soldiers at Ramstein Air Force Base - many of them younger than my children.  It was a truly humbling experience.  Thank you for contributing.

Interested in a book swap?

Amber of Seasons of Humility is having a wonderful book swap.  Wanna join?  Got some books you're looking for?  Or maybe you've got some books somebody else has been looking for.  Amber may just have solved your problem.  You can either lend, borrow or swap.  That's up to you, as long as both parties are in agreement.  Go check it out and see if someone has just "the" book you've been wanting.  And in the process, make a new friend.  Check out  Amber's Book Swap.

I love to read.  I have a library of probably well over 400 books that I just can't seem to part with them.  One of my daughters doesn't understand it at all - she gives her books away as soon as she finishes reading them.  Me?  I consider all of these books my "friends".  Some of the characters reached out and touched me.  Briefly, their lives became mine.  Their problems sometimes overlapped problems I had.  I just felt so close to them, and I didn't want them to leave me.  So I held on to them.  And I cherished them.  I even re-visited them and read many of those cherished stories over and over again.  But recently, I've come to realize the more I have, the more my children will need to sort through when I leave this earth.  So, I've been trying to go through all my "friends" and see which ones I can send to a new home.  And this book swap sounds like a lovely idea.  I'd know who my "friends" went to, and I'm sure I'd hear from that person and they'd tell me how much they had also come to love my "friends".  I'm reading through the books that are listed as "wanted" to see if someone is looking for any of the books I have that I could find it in my heart to send out. 

What about you?  Do your books become your "friends"?  Amber's book swap sounds like such a lovely idea.  Why don't you drop by her blog and check it out.

Are my feet in cement?

I'm still suffering from the sinus infection.  I need to get off my patootie and start working on those 9-patch blocks I told y'all about.  I wish I knew how to do that cool thing all of you in blog-land do where you say "I need to start working on those 9-patch blocks I told y'all about here" and then that little here takes you to the post where you told everybody about it.  I said I would make 4 blocks, and those blocks need to be in Debra's hands by March 15th. 

If you haven't already, go visit Debra at her website http://debraspincicdesignstudio.blogspot.com/2011/02/9-patch-blocks-needed.html (see, there's another example - I wish I knew how to say "visit Debra's blog" and have that link show up) and pledge to make some 9-patch blocks.  I have absolutely no idea how in the world she is going to get all those blocks in her hands by the 15th of March.

And hopefully I don't wimp out on her.  My feet seem to be in cement.  And it's not like me to commit to something and not follow through.  That simply is not me.    Dang sinus infection.  I almost feel like that woman in that commercial on TV with the little wind-up doll where she's dealing with depression.   And no - I'm NOT dealing with depression.  But man, this dang sinus infection has knocked me to my knees.

My apologies to you 2 or 3 readers I have.  I know this is a boring post and I'm rambling.  I just need to deal with this.  I don't like feeling this way, and I need some documentation for me to look at later so I can know it was a valid problem and hopefully one I overcame.  Lord, please let me get some energy, pull my bootstraps up and take control of my life.  [and pssst...Lord, please let me get those finished 9-patch blocks to Debra by March 15th]

"Blog has been removed" WARNING

Have you ever gone to visit a blog you've visited before and gotten something similar to the following message?  Blog has been removed. Sorry, the blog at pinelandspatches.blogspot.com has been removed.

If you're like me, you're thinking, "Wow, wonder why they closed their blog?"  Would you believe it might not have been closed on purpose????  That's what happened with Barbara.  Read this, and engrave it in your mind to prevent something like this happening to you.

Here is an e-mail from Barbara telling about the removal of her blog:

I'm devasted here.  Because of a new droid cell phone that requires a gmail account, that acct.  was set up for me at Verizon when I got my new phone. So, silly me, thinking I didn't need the old gmail account anymore, I deleted it. What a shock to find that old account was linked to my blog, so of course now my blog is totally gone.  I've dug on the web a little bit, and this is a common occurence, but there's not an easy answer. Even if I was successful in reactivating my old google account and getting my blog back, the photos seem to be gone forever.  So I googled my blog name and found some cached pages which may help remind me of what's important to re-post and a list of the blogs I follow. But my Followers and everyone will now get a notice that my blog is gone, and I have no way of knowing who all of them are.  Would you please post a note on your blog about this with a warning to everyone NEVER to delete that gmail account even if they don't use it or think they need it. If they want to keep their blog, they need it. I just didn't remember that it was necessary to have it from a couple years ago when I set up my blog.  I have a new blog already, but there's nothing in it. However, I'm going to post this and hope everyone will be able to find me again, perhaps with the help of some of my bloggy friends. It's a different name:
http://pinelandstreasures.blogspot.com/ 
Thanks...this too shall pass! :)
Barbara

So, if any of you visit my blog that normally follow Barbara...visit her at her new blog address.

Giveaway

Win a bundle of 15 fat Quarters from 'Where the Wind Blows' .  Giveaway ends Thursday, March 10th

http://vignetteinstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/guess-what.html

Finally feeling better and a little something

After three days of feeling like I was going to fall face first on the floor from the pressure from the sinus infection, I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better.  I worked from home again today, and what a day it was.  You know how some things just kinda sorta get on your nerves when you deal with them on a daily basis and you just shrug them off?  And then you get to feeling a little bad, and those same things just drive you up the wall?  Well, I've been overloaded with all those little things the last few days.

I finally got up enough gumption to look through fabrics and try to start sewing.  I'm learning I don't know how to keep up with UFOs, because some of them, I have no idea what the fabrics are (and how does one find out?), and I didn't necessarily keep the patterns with the UFOs (so how the heck do I figure out what pattern I was using?) and Lord have mercy, all the magazines, and books, and patterns.  And then all the fabric.  No matter how I try to get it organized, I never seem to quite get it the way I want it.  But I'm trying.  I'm watching all of you out there in bloggy land and I'm gonna find one of you that hits on just what I'm missing and I'm gonna grow up and be a "big girl".

I think I'm going to try to make a goal of working on something each week.  Maybe not necessarily each day (which is what I initially was going to say), and it won't matter what I work on, just that I work on something.  It could be a block from the calendar quilt, or maybe the panel I bought that needs to be "tweaked" so it no longer looks like something for Valentine's Day, and I know I've got a Turning Twenty UFO (now where is it??). 

I'm hoping to get back into sewing.  It's been entirely too long.  And you know what would make my life easier?  A GO!  Or maybe a GO! Baby.  If you think you'd like one too, why don't you go take a chance too?  No date was given as to when the giveaway ends, so go enter the contest quick!  Don't miss your chance.   http://www.pleasant-home.com/2011/03/wonky-star-baby-quilt-little-somthin.html