Various & Sundry #11 2013

Quilt Bear August Aurifil Club Selection
Quilt Bear August Aurifil Club Selection

I received my Aurifil club selection from The Quilt Bear on Monday and it is cute. I was piecing with turquoise thread other the weekend, because it was in the machine after I did some decorative stitches on the napkins and I figured I didn’t need to change it. I think I have plenty of piecing thread and can use whatever color is to hand. I do like the light grey for piecing, though. You, too, can join in the Aurifil club fun by checking out theAurifil Club page on The Quilt Bear site.

Blogging
Sister Diane (not my sister, but what she calls herself for some reason I don’t know) over at CraftyPod blog had a great post about marketing and blogging. I have to admit that I haven’t been asked to feature any products on my blog, though I do write book reviews for Lark. I write for Lark, because they offer me something. I am pretty sure that you all don’t wait for me to say “go and buy X product” then run out and buy it. S. D. says that we bloggers don’t need stuff to write about. I think we want exchanges with our readers and that can extend to marketers who want our attention as well.

I especially loved these lines “When you ask a blogger “Please mention this to your readers,” you’re essentially saying “Please come up with a great marketing idea for me. I won’t be paying you for this service. Thanks!” ” Sister Diane has good ideas for anyone wanting something from the blogger. If you had done what she suggested I would be more inclined to listen to your proposal than someone who just says they love my blog and does not show that they love it. Loving my blog means reading it periodically.

This is a well written and coherent post. I would urge you to read it and let me know what you think.

On the Web

Piecemeal Quilts has 4 posts on the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. The last one is here.

Katie talked about Fear of Failure on her blog recently. I am less nice and say “get over it and move on. There is always more fabric and you can worry when you are dead!” I know, not very nice, but I bet I made you laugh. I am also really sick of people putting themselves down. Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are a loser. Mistakes were invented so we could learn. Katie shows her progress in machine quilting as an example. I think I will try and do a post about progress on something. NOT machine quilting since you know how I feel about that, but perhaps there is something I felt frustrated about and can show progress. I would do it all for you, Chiclets. I put up mistakes so you can see that it is not all peaches and roses here at AQ. Let’s accept our mistakes and move forward.

Katie asked this question “So ask yourself, what is your fear of failure holding you back from achieving?” Tell me your answer.

Perhaps I’ll go do some machine quilting.

Gretchen has a great book review on one of Carol Doak’s paper piecing books. I am not much of a paoer piecer, but the technique does have its uses. The brief description given makes my mind soin with the possibility of adding corners and borders to blocks to make them more interesting or just different.

Tools

Camille Roskelley has a great photo of another clever use for WonderClips. (scroll about halfway down) Do you have any? No? Go buy some RIGHT now!

History Quilter Susan and I will be working on the Russian Rubix project together — well, alongside each other is a better description. I meant to buy the pattern when I was at Always Quilting for Sew Day, but forgot so I was surfing the web looking for a good price on shipping when I found a picture of a ruler to go with the project. (I know Flickr does sell stuff, but I got distracted!). That led me to the blog post with the link to Richard, who made the ruler/template. The templates are $15 and I think there are two, but you need to contact (info@red-designs.com) him yourself if you want more information on purchasing the rulers.

Housekeeping

Do you know about the Glossary?

34 people are now subscribing to the blog via email. Yay! And, thanks. 😉

Have you see the Quilts in Print page? I started a list of references to quilts in fiction, mostly, that I came across. Obviously it is not exhaustive, but I will note down what I find as I come across references. it is something I have been wanting to do and am glad I started finally. I plan to also surf around and see if someone else has done something similar.

Big doesn’t even begin to express the size of the mess I made over the weekend in my workroom. I think it wasn’t helped by bring a lot of stuff to sew day. It took me forever to unearth the floor. I did get a lot done and that was nice.