Drumroll, Please!

I know y'all are just dying, wondering who won the fabulous Charming Travelers giveaway.  Let me first tell you that this charm pack is chock FULL of fabricy goodness.  I snagged about 20 of Diane's charms, so there is still plenty of yumminess from the giveaway creator herself (I'm talking Hope Valley goodness included, people!).  I reloaded the pack with some of my favorites...you'll just have to wait and see what the stack beholds.  So, 56 delicious, drool-worthy squares are going to....

Kim of One Krafty Kitty Mama, who said "How exciting! I would love the chance to pet these charms!!! LOL".  (as a side note: I had 33 comments, one of which was a duplicate and one was left by a quilting buddy who is out of the country, so that left us with 31 entrants).

So, Kim...I'm going to send you an email and once you send me your address, this sweet stack-o-goodies will be on their way to you!

Thank you to all of those who entered.  Check out Kim's blog soon for another chance to win.  And keep tabs on Diane's blog to follow it around the country!

The One About Moving...

Some of you may have heard...not sure if I mentioned it on here at all...that we were waiting to hear if the man of the house got a promotion.  Well, the GREAT news is that he did!  Hip-hip-hooray for my honey!  The tough part of the deal is that we have to move.  I've moved a lot over the years...I've lived on both coasts, in the mountains, in the south, in cities and suburbs, on Army posts, in apartments and in our lovely little home here in New Hampshire.  So, the idea of moving isn't so bad, especially since we've always known that this is part of the deal with Paul's job.  BUT, we've never moved with school-aged children before.  We've never moved after living somewhere for 6 years.  I think it'll be a hard but awesome experience for all of us.  We'll be moving to the Northern Virginia area - Paul will be working in McLean, which is right outside of DC.  How cool will it be to live so close to DC?  So cool!  Paul has to report in a month...the rest of us will head down after school gets out and our house sells...so, sometime this summer.  Lots will be happening around here!

One thing that I won't be doing much of in the next few months is swapping.  Oh how I will miss it so!  I just finished up a couple of good ones and have a couple of small ones left on my plate.  It has taken all of my self-control and some pleading to friends to help me NOT sign up for any right now.  There are a few great ones that I'm bummed I can't do this time around:  the Modern She Made swap, the Potholder Pass, the Tabletop Swap, and the Fab Little Pincushion Swap, just to name a few.

Luckily I've been involved in some pretty great swaps lately.  Here are a couple I finished up -

The Scrappy Mug Rug Swap.  I love making minis...they're so quick and fun!  It's great to try out new blocks and ideas and techniques on a small scale so you don't spend too much time (and fabric!) on something that may not turn out fab.  My partner for the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap was the crazy-fun Kristen of Gock's Frocks.  She likes bright and scrappy, just like me, so it wasn't hard to be inspired for her mug rug.  Do you like it?  I tried some organic, wavy quilting and I just love how it turned out!

I received an amazing mug rug, too...I'll share it with you tomorrow...once I finally take pictures of it.

I also took part in the Doll Quilt Swap.  It's one of those swaps that can be a little intimidating (at least for me) because of the amazing talent in the group.  Not that my other swaps weren't full of awesomely-talented ladies and gentlemen, but there was just something about the last round or two of the Doll Quilt Swap that made me a little nervous to join.  I just sent this puppy out this morning, so mum's the word on its recipient:

This swap comes complete with some rules...I can be a rule-follower when I want to be, so I was game!  We had to make a quilt using at least 6 blocks, one of which had to be a log cabin, flying geese, churn dash/shoofly, drunkards path, or N.Y. beauty.  PLUS, we had to use a non-white solid.  So, after taking it all in and checking out my partner's mosaic and doing some stalking, I decided to do hexagon log cabin blocks, a la Lee of Freshly Pieced.  I made a pin cushion a couple of months back using her Hexing Around block and I just wanted to do it again...they're way fun to make!  I put them in a staggered setting on a spring green background.  I wasn't sure about the color at first (I mean, hello, white goes with everything!) but now I just love it...I think with the quilting and the orange binding the whole thing just works.  I sure hope my partner loves it as much as I do!

The last thing I sent off is a secret.  As soon as the recipient gets it, I'll fill you in...it's a good one!

So, between my swaps, bee blocks, other sewing, and moving, I've got lots going on!  I'll keep you posted on everything - it's a whirlwind around here!!  Thank you to everyone who has signed up for my Charming Travelers giveaway.  If you haven't, check it out HERE.



The Charming Travelers have arrived!

People...it's here....it's HERE!!   The Charming Travelers package arrived at my door yesterday and I couldn't be more excited!  I know you guys are all thinking "you didn't mention anything about a package...what are you so excited about, Deb?"  Y'all are going to LOVE this! 

If you've been reading many blogs or been on flickr much lately, there's no doubt you've seen charm swaps popping up all over the place.  If you've been lucky enough to get a spot in one, you may even be swapping your little heart out already.  But - what if we took a charm pack, sent it around the country, let people choose the charms they wanted, had them replace the charms they chose with new charms, asked them to post about it and host a giveaway on their blog, and then have them send the new stack to the next winner?  How fun would that be?  The most fun, right?  I don't know about you, but I have a thing for charms.  When I started sewing it was probably one of the first things I fell hard for.  So many different fabrics in one 5" stack.  It's heavenly, don't you think?  I digress... 

I can't take even a smidge of credit for this.  I've mentioned it before...I'm not all that creative.  I'm always thinking "man, I wish I thought of that!"  The great thing is, I'm getting to know some of the amazing people that DO think of this stuff!!  The fabulous Diane of from blank pages came up with this fantastic idea of a traveling charm pack.  Click on the picture to get the whole lowdown -


In a nutshell, Diane had a giveaway last week (well, she had a LOT of giveaways...she was doing a lot of celebrating!) - one of them was for the traveling charm pack.  And, yours truly won it...I know, that in itself is reason to celebrate!  It's a prize with a twist.  You get the whole stack of charms, BUT  you have to make a few promises if ya want it (don't worry, these are promises you can keep!) -

• you must be an active blogger (so you can post about it and host your own giveaway!)
• you must reside in the US
• before sending the charm pack off to the next winner, you must be sure there are 56 - 5" x 5" squares of fabric in the stack - please no yucky fabrics
• to help keep the map updated, you must fill out the quick and easy form to let Diane know where you are!
• if the charm pack arrives full of unwanted charms, let Diane know and we'll clear it out and fill it back up with some more beautiful fabrics! 

So, you get the stack, pull out the ones you want, fill it up with gorgeous new charms to equal 56, post about it on your blog, have a giveaway, choose a winner, and send it on its merry way to your winner.  Then the whole thing starts all over again.  Diane's keeping track of its whereabouts and we can all follow it on her fab map - I wonder where it's going to end up next!

If this sounds like fun and YOU'D like a chance to win the charm pack, just leave me a comment...any comment will do.  One entry per person.  Mr. Random will choose a winner on Friday.  In the meantime, I'll be stacking and restacking and choosing and petting and swooning over the charms...there are some really good ones in there!  Good luck!