Pokey : Giveaway

My 1st QA Community Giveaway!

Pokey — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:10:00 GMT

It is so thrilling to see so many people joining our QA Community. I hope you are finding your way around successfully, posting in the forums, and enjoying the various features of this site!

We want to make this community the fun and engaging place for art quilters and fiber artists to network, share ideas, and grow as artists. To that end, we would love for you to branch out of lurkdom and share your thoughts in the forums; decorate and load your home pages with pictures, announcements, and friends; and post your artwork in the photo galleries (just be sure to tag your photos with your name so you create your own gallery page).

We would also love for this community to grow, and as a little incentive, I am raffling off ten SideWinder Bobbin Winder by Wrights , each with a bag of my own hand-dyed, screen-printed fabrics to QA members who get a friend to join the community. These SideWinder Bobbin Winder by Wrights are pretty nifty! With this portable little gadget, there's no need to unthread your machine to load a bobbin with thread, saving loads of time and aggravation.

You can up your chances of winning a Sidewinder and bag of colorful fabrics by inviting more friends. (So for example if you invite three friends and all three join, I'll enter your name three times into the raffle.) Just let me know in the comments area for this blog entry the QA community user name(s) of the person(s) you got to join, and I'll take care of the rest!

I also want to honor members who are participating in the community (posting photos, messages to the forums, comments to pictures, building out your home pages, etc.) so if you leave a comment in this blog entry letting me know what you've been up to around here, I'll include your name, too!

I will announce the 10 winners Tuesday, May 5th at 5:00 EDT.

Thank you for helping us spread the Quilting Arts love and making this a quality community!

Survey Says: Most Popular Fruit or Veggie for 2010 Calendar Contest

Pokey — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:38:00 GMT

Winners of the Sidewinders

To recap, last week I asked you which fruit or vegetable was the most popular entry depicted in thread and fabric for our "Fresh Picked" 2010 Quilting Arts Calendar contest.

The five choices I gave were:

Apples
Pears
Tomatoes
Oranges
Pumpkins

If you answered pears, congratulations, you are correct!

The following five people are lucky winners of a SideWinder Bobbin Winder by Wrights. Just think of all the time you will save and all of the additional sewing and quilting you can accomplish with the aid of this nifty little tool!

Congratulations to:

Shelly R. Sessions
Carolyn Howland
Jill Williams
Mary K. McGraw
Diana Cruz

Please email your full shipping address to Diana Theriault and in the subject line write SIDEWINDER BLOG WINNER. Enjoy!

A special thanks to Simplicity Creative Group for donating the Sidewinders!

While We're in Chicago

Just an FYI that I will be Tweeting from the show floor at Make It University!(TM) at International Quilt Festival/Chicago as well as posting pictures to my Facebook account. When I return, I will load albums and stories onto this blog. (And if insomnia strikes while I'm away--and I hope it doesn't--maybe I'll post to the blog from the hotel.)

Hope to see many of you in Chicago!

Winners in the New Year!

Pokey — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:15:58 GMT

Congratulations to following 10 people for winning the first QA Blog fabric raffle for 2009!

Thanks to everyone for posting your resolutions, goals, and good wishes for the New Year. We loved reading what you all aspire to accomplish by the end of the year. (You're an ambitious lot!)

I ask that the following people email me your full name and mailing address, and in the subject line of your email write (in caps) 2009 WINNER. Once everyone has emailed me, I will get the goods out to you (probably within the next ten days).

Willa (OK, I admit I purposely picked Willa for being the very first to comment in the New Year.)
Alice (of Aliceandjo)
Melissa (who posted at Jan 2, 6:12 PM)
Elaine Koenig
The Quilt Rat
Karen Christensen
Penney
Beth M.
Mary Ann Van Soest
Katie (Raggamuffingal)

If you didn't win some fabrics, you can still win a heart…

I found the following news story via Laura Krasinski about a young boy battling a rare form of brain cancer. To keep him distracted from painful chemo. treatments, he loves collecting postcards from around the globe. I bet he would equally love handmade postcards, too. Will you join me in sending him one? Click on the image below to see Connor's story...

Lastly, we are hard at work on our March/April issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and have a burning question for you!

How have you improvised? When you can’t find—or don’t have—the tool you really want, what’s the silliest (or craziest) substitution you’ve ever made? And what were the results? We’d love to know. Send your responses to bdelaney@interweave.com.

Fabric Stash Giveaway Part II

Pokey — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:59:58 GMT

Thanks so much to everyone who sent Barbara your favorite art book titles and answered my Snooze or Cruise vacation question from my previous entry. Some of your responses were hilarious! This past vacation I had intended to only be a cruiser, but alas, fate intervened.

A funny thing happened on the way to the cruise ship…

The Saturday John and I were to board the Liberty of the Seas, we quickly discovered neither of us had our passports. Yes, we both nearly lost consciousness at the boat check-in when we discovered they were missing. We are sticklers about our passports; cough it up to spousal confusion on why we didn't have them then (let’s not go there). After four hours of kicking ourselves and sweating it in the terminal lounge desperately hoping someone could fax copies of our birth certificates, we weren't able to board the ship.

We thanked our lucky stars we had the sense to get travel insurance, forced ourselves to mentally switch gears, and opted to have our passports Fed Exed to us so we could meet the ship at the next port. In in the meantime we decided to hit one of the most outlandish places on the planet: South Beach!

However, God has a sense of humor because when we got to our hotel room, what did we see head out to sea?

Yes, that's our boat…with John's luggage still on it. All we could do was laugh, go to a men's clothing store to tide John over until we met the ship, and head to the nearest bar to commiserate with a round of mojitos!

We ended up having a fantastic vacation. It was brainless, restful, and fun. And I even danced the Fox Trot with an elderly gentleman who asked me if I'd step in for his wife who wasn't up for it. I think I stepped on his poor feet about twenty times (he didn't ask for a second dance), but it was fun! My favorite picture was from the sandy beaches in St. Maarten when someone snuck up on me…

To all who responded to the last post, congratulations! You now qualify for round two of the stash giveaway, and your chances of winning are really good since I have 15 baggies to hand out! All yo now need to do is answer the question below by Monday morning:

Here's my question: What quilt shows, mixed-media retreats have you gone to so far in 2008 and/or what shows are you planning on attending through the end of this year? If you've been unable to go to any, what show/ retreat do you wish you had attended? Please respond by 9:00 AM EDT Monday, September 29. I will post the names of the winners Monday afternoon along with some exciting Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors news!

Have a great weekend!

How well do you know your editor? A two-part giveaway!

Pokey — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:10:01 GMT

This is the first of two blog entries where you, cherished blog reader, have the opportunity to receive a fat (and I mean FAT) stash of stenciled, screened, and stamped papers and hand-dyed fabrics. I will be giving 15 of these stashes away.

Challenge Part 1

I’m posting this brief blog entry while I start a week’s vacation. Your challenge is to figure out what kind of vacationing editor I am.

Am I a:

a. Snoozer (Island-hopping, t-shirt wearing, sandal smacking beach bum.)

b. Cruiser (Bingo loving, Lido deck gawking, midnight chocolate buffet fanatic.)

Here’s your task: Give me your best guess in the comments area (or be creative and offer up another idea), then also answer the following question:

What’s your favorite art-related book?

Is there a book about art, an artist, or the artful life that has inspired you, taught you something, or is just fun to read? A book you give to all your artsy friends or maybe curl up with to read time and time gain? Tell us! Email your response to bdelaney@interweave.com.

Once you have done both, pat yourself on the back. You have successfully completed the first part of the challenge and have qualified for round two! (More on that later.) Back to enjoying a little r & r for just a bit…