A New Blog (no foolin')!!

I was gonna save this news until tomorrow until I realized it's the first of April . . . I didn't want you to think I was pulling an April Fool's joke.

I've launched a new blog (I may have hinted at this before) . . .

The blog is Tessellation Nation (it's got a catchy ring to it, don't you think??). It's primarily a catalog of the blocks and patterns possible using my design tile. I intend to post to it often, but, even so, it'll take 5-6 months to get through all of the patterns. The blog entries are drawings, nothing but drawings . . . all the real meat is in the pages in the sidebar.

I invite you to take a look, leave a comment (or two), and subscribe (via reader or email) . . .

Don't fret . . . I'm not abandoning THIS blog. I just thought the patterns deserved a blog of their own. Besides, I'm still quilting!! Just wait till you see the next project . . .

My 100th post!!

Yes, I've been quiet . . . several people have written to ask "what's up"??

The truth is, I've been busy. Too busy to write, you wonder?? Well, in a word, "yes."

Several weeks ago, I got an email from Joe Cunningham. He's the quilter in San Francisco who interviewed me last year for the book he was writing about male quilters. Anyway, he sent me a pic of the book cover. This book will be out in the fall, and I'm in it!!


Joe had a favor to ask of me: would I be willing to write a pattern for one of my quilts shown in the book?? Though I'd never written a pattern before, I said, "yes." The process was quite fun, actually. I configured Electric Quilt to print the templates to a file; then, I imported that file into CorelDraw, where I made the cutting lines thicker, the seam lines dashed, and positioned the templates next to each other to facilitate cutting them apart. The instructions were originally 12 typed pages long!! I managed to edit them down to three (which is what the editor wanted). I could see doing this again . . . in fact, I DID do it again with the templates for my design tile, which leads me to my next activity.

Last week, I gave a lecture and workshop for the Santa Rosa Quilt Guild in Santa Rosa, CA. I prepared about 35 sandpaper-backed templates for my design tile, and 500 muslin foundations!! I shipped slides, templates, foundations, and quilts to Santa Rosa overnight, rather than stuff 'em all in my suitcase. The lecture was well-received, with about 200 quilters in attendance, and there were about 14 quilters in the workshop the following morning. And, of course there were requests for patterns!! I'm gonna have to work on those . . .

Now, I'm home and getting ready for a lecture at a local guild next month. I want to have plenty of templates and foundation muslins on hand, LOL!!

I'm toying with the idea of starting a new blog . . . don't freak out!! I'm not abandoning THIS one (and leave you behind), but I want to focus on a single topic. I'm all over the place on this one, LOL!! I will certainly keep you posted on developments . . .

Thank you for reading my blog . . . please feel free to leave a comment and follow this blog!!