Boxing Day Sew-In Giveaway

It's that time of year again! 

Join us for the 

Boxing Day Sew In

Wednesday, December 26th.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Our family has a tradition of having a "Pajama Day" the day after Christmas. The change in the tradition is that where I used to spend the day on the floor playing with Legos or whatever the toy of the year was with my kidlings, now I spend the day in my sewing room recuperating with fabric while my grown children are doing whatever college kids do. 

In honor of my friends from other places of the world for whom the day after Christmas is a venerable tradition named Boxing Day, my Pajama Day has become the Boxing Day Sew-In.

So why don't put on your jammies and slippers, and join me? We'll be chatting away on Twitter through the day (I'm @sandyquiltz if you're not already connected with me there).

In honor of yet another day of giving, I'm holding a give-away here on my blog. You can enter beginning as soon as this blog goes live at one minute past midnight on December 26th, until 11:59 p.m. Almost a full 24 hours to take your chances!

The one lucky winner will win two things--count 'em: Two!

The first item in my giveaway is one brand new DVD of a quilting documentary named "The Skin Quilt Project." From the back cover: "....This provocative film explores the significance of preserving the African-American quilting tradition, as well as how the practice of quilting brings self-confidence, cultural awareness, and self-esteem to the African cultural heritage. As they share their stories, the women and men in this film help us to consider a quilter's unique ability 'to see the beauty in all colors.'"

I own a copy of this documentary and found it extremely thought-provoking, as well as a wonderful celebration of quilting, quilting communities, and the artistic impulse that anyone can relate to regardless of their skin color. I highly recommend it and hope whoever wins it will enjoy it as thoroughly as I did1

The second item in my giveaway is, honestly, helping me clean out my stash for the new year! I have far too many 2 1/2" strips kicking around. So whoever wins this giveaway will also receive a grab-bag of 50 (fifty) 2 1/2" strips from my stash. The picture is just a conglomeration from the stash--your grab-bag may or may not include strips pictured. Trust me--I won't just send you the ones I don't like. :-)  I'll just close my eyes and grab 50, I'll make sure they're all full WOF and cut straight, and they're yours. You'll be helping me out immensely, and hopefully you'll be able to use them in some wonderful project soon!

To enter this giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment here saying what you think you'd use a 2 1/2" strip for. You can be as creative as you want--it doesn't necessarily just have to be in a quilt!

Don't forget, you must have your email address included in your comment or accessible on your profile, or I won't be able to include you in the giveaway. 

Have a wonderful Pajama Day-slash-Boxing Day. Don't forget to check out any other giveaways that are linked to this post!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Podcastaversary Give-Away--Week 4--American Quilter's Society Gift Certificate

If you're a long-time follower of my blog or podcast, you know that my mother gets all the credit for introducing me to the world of quilting. After her passing, as I was working on cleaning out a set of drawers in her quilt studio, I came across her collection of pins from quilt shows she'd attended through the years, and a significant number of pins indicating her long-time membership in the American Quilter's Society. Once again following in her footsteps (my mom was a smart woman!), I joined the AQS as well and have enjoyed the benefits that membership has afforded me.

 For the final week of my two year podcastaversary give-away, I'm offering up a $25 gift certificate to the American Quilter's Society. 

You can use the gift certificate to become a member of AQS for a year, buy great quilting books, or subscribe to The Quilt Life Magazine--one of my favorites. Becoming a member of AQS gives you discounts galore, including reduced registration fees at AQS-sponsored quilt shows. (Paducah, anyone?) I've enjoyed my membership and am glad to have the opportunity to pay it forward!

To enter into this drawing, leave a comment below telling me what you think you would do with the gift certificate if you were to win. It's a random drawing--I won't be "grading" your answers. Just curious!

Leave your comments by midnight Eastern time (NY) on Saturday, April 28th, 2012. I'll be using my old friend "random number generator" to choose the winner! (Don't forget to make sure your email address is in your profile or comment so I can contact you. Hate to have to skip you if your name comes up but I have no way to be in touch!)

(Please note--I will be out of the country until May 2 and will only have intermittent email access. Although I'll make my best efforts to check in and do the drawing, I may not be able to announce the winner of this giveaway until after my return. So go ahead and enter, and spread the word to all your friends by tweeting this post or pasting it into your Facebook status update or whatever--but you may need to be a little patient in hearing the results. Thanks!)

Boxing Day Sew-In--Join the Fun!

Keep your cyber-eyes glued here. For 24 hours on December 26, 2011, Boxing Day Sew-In comes to town! I'll be posting all the information you need to play along at midnight (North American Eastern Standard Time, or UTC-5 hours) on December 26*!

The blog post will have information about give-aways, mini-challenges, other goodies. Pam of Hip to Be a Square, Tanesha of Crafty Garden Mom, Sandi of Quilt Cabana Corner, and Jaye of Artquiltmaker, will all be hosting or sponsoring giveaways as well--you'll find all the information and links here as soon as Dec 26 hits at my house.

Also--to make the fun even better--we'll be having fun on Twitter too! Not only will we be keeping one another updated on our progress via Twitter, but we'll be having special Twitter-only challenges and giveaways. Want an easy way to keep track of #BDSI on Twitter? Go to www.tweetchat.com, link it to your Twitter account, and then follow #BDSI. You'll be able to track all the #BDSI convos in one easy place! Be sure to check it frequently--some mini-challenges will have time constraints on them!

Boxing Day Sew-In will officially end again at midnight EST--as soon as December 26 ends at my house--24 hours of fun! Giveaway winners will be announced on December 27th.

To help you with the time zone math--starting at midnight at my house means that BDSI starts at:
5:00 a.m. Dec 26 in London
6:00 a.m. Dec 26 in Berlin
2:00 p.m. Dec 26 in Tokyo
4:00 p.m. Dec 26 in Sydney
And 24 hours is 24 hours no matter where on the globe you're standing. So, for some of you, BDSI will be ending on December 27th. And that's OK with me.

(Thanks to The World Clock time zone converter at www.timeanddate.com, 'cause I sure can't do that math myself!)

Spread the word--the more the merrier!

Thanks so much to Pam for the BDSI badge--we love it! Grab it here and post it to your own blog!

Winner of Blog Hop, Next Big Event, and Some Pics

First, thanks all for coming to the party, the Quilting Gallery 4th Birthday Party blog hop! I had fun reading everyone's comments and can pretty much guarantee you that it'll end up as a podcast episode coming up soon. I'm also so thrilled to announce that, with thanks to the random number generator at random.org, SassyCoconut won the drawing! Woohoo! I've picked up from reading SassyCoconut's blog that she's a young, new quilter. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to help her along in her quiltmaking journey just a little bit more. Congrats, SC, and thanks again to everyone else!

Now, the next big event... #ABFSI (Anti-Black Friday Sew-In) was so popular--and so many people wanted to be sure we did it again next year, that I decided, why wait? Several other podcasters and bloggers have decided to join in the fun with me this time and we're hosting the Boxing Day Sew-In (#BDSI) on December 26th. Pam ("Hip to Be a Square" podcast), Sandi ("Quilt Cabana Corner" podcast and pattern designer), Jaye (www.artquiltmaker.com), and Tanesha ("Crafty Garden Mom" podcast) are all joining me in offering up great give-aways and fun ideas for the day, so plans are in the works. Eschew the crowds at the shopping centers (isn't "eschew" just a great word?) and stay at home in your jammies and sew! We'll have lots of giveaways and a variety of ways to win, so mark the date on your calendar and watch here for more details as we figure them out. We'll find a way for you to participate whether you're on Twitter, Facebook, or none of the above...so for now, just make your plans to stay home, pick out your fave pair of jammies, and get ready for a relaxing day of fun and quiltmaking!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.... During the blog hop week, I managed to get some stuff done. Here's a picture of my son's Christmas gift...he's a student at University of Buffalo. I downloaded their logo, created it in applique, then echo-quilted around it (not worrying, obviously, about being too exact on those echoes!).

It finished around 13" x 15" or thereabouts--not very big. But I think he'll enjoy it.

Second finish of the week, my niece's quilt I'm naming "[her name]'s California Dreams." She loves visiting her cousins in California, and the fabric line is named Sausalito, hence the name.

Not that she'll ever know, since I didn't make a label. I'm not expecting any of these quilts to last until I'm no longer on this earth and will be making them much nicer quilts sometime in their future, so I wasn't sweating the labeling thing this time. I'm documenting it on my end, though.

In any case, this was the Five Yard Designs pattern--one yard each of five fabrics does the entire front, border, and binding. It requires a couple of additional yards for the backing.

I had it done by my wonderful long-armer with an allover pantograph--couldn't get too good a picture of it because of stinky lighting. Apologies.

I still have one more quilt to get bound before Christmas, so watch for more pictures by the end of the week.

And don't forget to mark the 26th on your calendar!

Quilting Gallery 4th Birthday BlogHop Party! Woot Woot!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED as of December 17, 2011.

Special note: This drawing will officially close at midnight December 17th, Eastern Time. All comments received after that time will not be counted. Thanks!

A very happy birthday to the Quilting Gallery! And a warm welcome to all you party-goers who are celebrating with them by hopping along to some blogs. Thanks for hopping by mine!

"Quilting...for the Rest of Us" is my blog, my quilty podcast, and a community of like-minded--or somewhat obsessed, you be the judge--people of the Quilt Clan who like to think, talk, and dream about quilting. I'm glad you decided to stop by to join the QFTRU community, even if just for a couple of minutes.

One conversation we've been having lately in the QFTRU Facebook Page is: What quilt project would you absolutely love to be able to do right now, if you had everything else on your "need-to-get-done" list done? We got a lot of great responses! In fact, that's going to be my topic for this week's episode (www.quiltingfortherestofus.com or in iTunes). I've loved reading everyone's responses and I think they may inspire listeners to work on their own dream projects.

So I'm going to ask you the same thing.

Leave a comment here with your dream quilt project, and I'll draw a name randomly from the responses and send you ...

some fat quarters...

and a great book....








to help you get it done!

This giveaway, part of the Blog Hop Party, goes until December 17th. Make sure you head on back to the Blog Hop Party to get in on all the great give-aways. But I hope you'll come back to visit again soon!

Paint Chip Challenge...the story continues...

Paint Chip Challenge Fabrics
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz

Kona Solids charm packs to the rescue! I ordered three charm packs of Kona Solids from Fat Quarter Shop: Brights, Pastels, and one in grays and blacks that I think was named "Silent Movie" or something like that. Even though I technically only needed three colors, I decided it wasn't such a bad idea to add some solid charms to my charm stash to help round out charm packs for projects. As I've talked about in past episodes, pre-cut packs are always way heavy in the mediums and struggle a bit with lights and darks; plus, solids in small pieces can sometimes provide a nice counterpart to a whole lot of pattern going on.

In any case, I matched my paint chips pretty dang closely, don't you think?

I also got another fabric to go with this too--but can't show a picture of it because it would completely give-away what my plans are for the challenge project. And I want to keep that a surprise...at least, until I know if I can actually pull it off!

By the way, don't forget to leave your own thoughts about what you'd make from these colors on the first post on this topic to have your name entered for a give-away. (Please do leave it on that first post--can't guarantee I'll catch your name for the drawing if you leave it on a different post!) Thanks to everyone who has already commented--I've really enjoyed reading them!

What Would (a) Quilter Do?

Paint Chip Challenge Chips
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz

My guild is doing another paint chip challenge--one of my faves! We draw three paint chips at random from a jar. We then have to use fabrics in those colors, add a black and a white, and make it work. We're not supposed to use fabrics that have any other colors in them--and no shades or tints. It has to be as close to that actual color as we can manage to get. I'm thinking it would be virtually impossible to avoid having any other colors at all in our projects unless we all only use solids--I'm trying to remember what I did last time we did this a few years back. However, our guild can be quite forgiving, shall we say. And there's really nothing at stake--it's just for fun. So although I'm interpreting it pretty darn closely (yes, I am using predominantly solids), I may veer just a hair off the path.

I know what I'm doing--I immediately saw it in my mind when I looked at these three colors in my hand. I just went online this morning and bought the fabric I'll be using; although I've got plenty of black and white in my stash, I didn't have anything distinctly any of these colors.

I'm curious: What would you do with these? What do they say to you? (Leave your own response by November 27th and I'll draw one lucky commenter's name for a fabricy gift! *Editor--I've extended the deadline a few days because of a glitch in my podcast that meant I couldn't give listeners as much lead-time as I'd like. So you have a few more days to respond!)