PICK FOUR BLOG HOP!!! AUTOGRAPHED BOOK GIVEAWAY!!

What a wonderful day for a Blog hop and week.

I was so excited when Sue asked me to be a part of this hop...so here is her book.



Here is the unveiling of the quilt I have been working on. What a fun pattern Sue!

The instructions were easy to read and the pictures were great!!! I am a picture person to be honest. I am not going to tell you much about this pattern except that she has a fun trick to this quilt pattern. Don't want to spoil the surprise for you.
You can get the book at LQS's, Amazon, and Martingale &Co. or maybe win one here??? Or there?

You have already heard quite a bit about her book, not much else I can tell you but....

HERE IS THE REST OF THE STORY!! (interviewing Sue)


So in your book you said that you had walked by a store with a quilt in the window. That you had to go and take a look and from that moment it was history. Your love affair of quilting started.

1. So...did you take classes or are you self taught?

Yes is the short answer! I started by teaching myself, then took a few classes, then moved house but carried on alone and finally enrolled for some more classes a year after we moved so I could unlearn all the bad habits I'd developed.


2. What do you use for inspiration. In your book you used a teddy bear.

That's an interesting question. I wish I had an interesting answer, but the plain fact is I don't know, ideas just seem to appear from nowhere.

Why did you only chose four colors?

I think it's because I'm a control freak. If I try to do a scrappy quilt, I find myself trying to organise the scraps somehow into colour ranges, or types of pattern or whatever. The only way I can truly do anything scrappy is to put all the pieces in a bag and make myself use whichever piece I pull out each time. Don't tell anyone though, but sometimes I even cheat and put one piece back and pull out another one. I always have trouble looking at a random pile of fabrics and visualising a finished quilt from them. Now I know that many people will be gasping in horror at this whole answer, so I do hope I haven't lost you too many readers and followers.
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4. How did you come about writing a book?

Well, I didn't mean to! I just had too many ideas in my "I Wonder What This Would Look Like" folder on the computer and writing a book was a good way of clearing some things out to make room for more


5. How long did it take you to write this book, from start to finish?

The whole process took about 18 months from start to finish, but a lot of that time was hurry-up-and-wait time for me. When I got the contract from the publishers, Martingale & Co, they gave me 6 months before I had to submit the manuscript, finished quilts, etc to them. "Easy", I thought. "No problem", I thought. Well I can tell you now I was wrong. Oh so wrong, but it was definitely made easier by friends who volunteered to make some of the quilts, and others who tested blocks for me. Thanks Lis, Drew, Kim and Roberta. After I sent everything to Martingale, there was a fairly stop-go sort of period of about a further 6 months, while they did all the things they had to do to turn what I said into what I meant to say, then it went to the printers and then came the exciting time when publication day finally arrived about 18 months after I first received the contract.


6. You have a long arm machine?

Yes I have, but it's all driven by computers. I'm not clever enough to be able to do freemotion quilting.


7. Did you quilt most of these quilts in this book?

I quilted those that I pieced and Lis and Drew, who have exactly the same setup as me, quilted the ones they made.


8. You had mentioned that you never really like sewing, what has changed your mind?

What, do you mean that piecing and quilting is sewing???


9. When not quilting, what do you do?

Think about quilting. Did I hear someone at the back suggesting I have a one-track mind?


10. You and your husband are retired? Did you work before?

Yes I worked as a programmer/systems analyst first and then in the space and communications industry before moving into recruitment and sales, which was something I really loved doing.

You also said I could add in any other questions, so, in case anyone needs to know my favourite food is chocolate!

Now for the fun part!!! I get to giveaway an autographed book of "PICK FOUR", just leave a comment and do go by and visit Sue's Blog, Quilt Times, it would be nice if you followed her but that is not a stipulation of winning.

Be sure to go by and visit Darlene at "Sewcalgal" tomorrow and thanks for joining us!!

I will pick a winner on Sept 3rd.

I hope all of you were safe during Irene???