Here is the winning image. Each of the clues brought you one step closer to this image.  It is a picture that I took from my hotel when I was teaching in Ketchikan, Alaska. It was located in my April Newsletter on my web page.

Just a quick note to let you know we have a winner in the collect clues contest.

I just returned from Hershey, PA after teaching 6 workshops filled with fun and fabulous students at the Quilt Odyssey 2008. I travel with lots of stuff, so when I arrive I am always happy to receive a helping hand getting my quilts and supplies to my classroom. The staff at Hershey was wonderful and this delightful young man, who is heading off to Dartmouth in the fall, was ever so helpful. I taught six different classes and enjoyed chocolate all weekend long. What could be better? Some of the students were returning students from previous years and many others were brand new this year and lots had never paper-pieced before.

One thing you all will learn is that I have a really difficult time keeping things under wraps. So, I woke up this morning and thought I would share a little sneak peak at one of the new vests being featured in my new book, Easy Reversible Vests -Revised Edition, coming out in September. This vest features a wonderful array of darling little plaid and stripe fabrics. A small patchwork garden sprouts around the vest. It reverses to a gorgeous batik combination on the other side. I am really looking forward to wearing this vest this fall.

 When I was working on my new vest, I wrote that I don’t always put the fabric away, but just push it aside for now. My justification for this practice is that I might need a piece of that fabric and I don’t want to stop the creative process by organizing my fabric neatly on the shelves. 

Today I went off to teach a workshop from my Mariner`s Compass Stars  book, called Fire and Ice. I had just gone through the introductory information about the class and the fire alarms began ringing with directions to exit the building. So, we all did as told and went to the area outside the lobby of the hotel. The sirens could be heard and the big red fire engines appeared. With short order, it was determined that it was a false alarm, but as we gathered outside, we had our picture taken with one of the fireman on his truck. He was interested in our “Fire and Ice” quilting class and I do believe he was having fun.

As the members of my Yahoo Group know, I do love surprises and giving away prizes. I decided it should be no different here so I will begin a new game called “Collect the Clues” with this blog. It will be a sort of scavenger hunt in search of an image. In each blog, I will give you a clue to the image and at a set future date, the first person who emails me the answer to what the image is and where it was specifically found will win 60 Fat Quarters of fabric from one of my previous fabric collections!!!!

This past weekend I drove to Pennsylvania to present a lecture and workshops. I typically fly to places to teach, so this 7 1/2-hour drive gave me plenty of time to reflect and enjoy the ride.  I began to think about one of the biggest misconceptions quilters have about paper piecing….that bigger is easier. In life, bigger usually is easier…we grew up with “big blocks” and “large print” in kindergarten. In traditional quilting, larger blocks typically are fewer pieces and are easier. With paper piecing, it is just the opposite…smaller really is easier. I was introduced to this notion by one of my students who took a small graphic I provided in a handout and went home to make the block. She sent me a picture and shared her excitement. It is not more difficult to sew a short line or a line that is closer together and with paper piecing, that produces a small piece. The Nosegay quilt at the left was my first miniature paper-pieced quilt and I was hooked! 

After making this first quilt, I set out to design lots more miniature quilts. I could take advantage of incorporating paper-pieced borders because they would fit on a piece of paper. I could pre-cut all my fabric pieces and eliminate cutting lots of different sizes. With the Nosegay quilt, the background pieces used in the top of the block were cut the same size because they just needed to be larger than the area they need to fill. Creating a cutting list for paper piecing was actually born out of designing miniature quilts. Because the pieces don’t need to be the exact size, just bigger than the area they need to fill, the fabric pieces are huge in relationship to the patch they are covering. When I am paper piecing miniatures, it almost feels like a carefree version of paper piecing because I don’t need to be nearly as careful.

What quilter doesn’t have a bunch of scraps hanging around that are too small to create patchwork quilts? They are perfect for scrap miniature quilts! You can stack the scraps and cut a uniform size and use them in minis. That is what I did to make the scrap stars quilt on the left. I used warm colored scraps for one end of the block and cool colored scraps for the other end. When they met, they produced both warm and cool colored scrap stars. These quilts and 13 others were featured in my book, Easy Paper-Pieced Miniatures that I wrote in the early 1990’s. Unfortunately that book is out of print, so I have begun publishing the individual patterns and making them available in the store on my web page. Just try one mini, I guarantee you will be hooked too. When I teach introductory paper piecing classes, the students do agree that smaller really is easier!

May all your points be perfect,

Carol