Coming Soon! Inspired to Sew blog Tour!

  I'm so incredibly excited that I get to be part of Bari J's Inspired to Sew blog tour! My day is February 7th, and I'll be giving away a copy of her book! Can you imagine! And I'm extra excited because she was a sponsor on Talkin Tuesday just last week! And I know how excited everyone was for her book there! Trust me you will not want to miss this!

Here's the schedule for the blog tour and all I can say is wow. I can't believe I'm involved with anything and these amazing women!!

January 31  Mary of Confessions of a Craft Addict

February 1 Jennifer Paganelli of SisBloom

February 2 Jona of Stop Staring and Start Sewing

February 3 Rashida from I Heart Linen

February 4 Sarah Fielke of The Last Piece - OMG is all I can say. Hero worship

February 5 Jenny of Crescendoh


February 6 CaraQuilts - Hey that's me!! 

February 7 Deborah of Whip Stich Fabrics

Febuary 8 Monica of Happy Zombie  - Can you believe I'm involved in something with her??? So excited

So mark your calenders! This is one tour you don't want to miss!!

Stash Manicure

Today I'm a guest blogger over on Stash Manicure!! I was so honoured to be asked to contribute to a blog I've admired!
Go check it out. I'll wait. Go. I give you some new ideas for nine patches.

Just have too much stash?? Or looking for something special from a while ago? Check out another of Niki's great idea's My Stash Booty! Can you tell she likes word play? No? Keep reading.

Most of you know about my work with Stitchin Heaven, designing their Charm School and Perse-Anality monthly clubs. You didn't? Oh well you do now! LOL
Well I went a beggin' to Niki over at Stitchin Heaven and she agreed to give one lucky reader a goody bag!

To enter leave me a comment about each of the following, each worth one entry.

Be a follower of my blog.
Be or become a follower of Stitchin Howdy (through Google Reader)
Follow me, @caraquilts, on Twitter
Follow @StitchinHeaven on Twitter.

Good Luck!

Questions for you

 I've been seeing a lot online lately about people evaluation their blogs, what they want from them, direction and so on.

  Since today is my third annual 25th birthday I thought I'd throw it out there to my friends.

What do you like, not like, are ambivalent about when it comes to my blog, or any kind of blog?

 Am I promoting myself too much? Not sharing enough? Too much Little Bit? Want more of the scamp?

Any opinion would be appreciated. It's always been difficult for me to know what to do with my blog but I've also loved the socialization of it, and the fact that I've pushed myself and grown because of it as well. I've learned so much and grown even more, a bit too much in the pants but that's another problem.
Quilting has become my world more and more. If you want even more of me, make sure to follow me on twitter as I'm there regularly and find it much easier to have a "chat" over there than through email.

 So think on it...who is CaraQuilts? What is CaraQuilts and where do we want to go from here?

Candle mat Swap...again?

 I was contacted my Michele Foster of Quilting Gallery, asking me to be a swap angel and make up another candle mat for a person who either didn't receive one, or the one they did receive was really, really under par.

  Since this is such a quick and easy pattern, and I love mine so much, I  said of course! Here it is in Happy by My Sister & Me.

I quilted it similarly to the Nature's Notebook one, only instead of pebbling I did some little leaves, and didn't meander the edge, just stitched in the ditch.

These little quilts are so great for practicing free motion quilting. They are small enough they manuveur easily, which is great because I haven't found my quilting gloves from the move, and they are useable afterwards. I never can convince myself to make a sandwich that will be thrown away after. But I also don't want to try something too new without some practice. So these are perfect!





If you've signed up for the Mug Rug Swap today is the last day to confirm your registration!!

Yesterday's Talkin Tuesday was awesome! We're really getting to have larger groups! And the prizes are always awesome! Last night I gave away a clover seam ripper, 2 charm packs, a jelly roll and a layer cake! Come and join us! It's not hard I promise.
Get a twitter account.
Follow me, @caraquilts.
9-11pm EST join us.
 Just add #talknt to your tweets, which have to be unprotected, and they will show up to everyone looking at the chat!
I find it easier to do a chat in a secondary application like tweetdeck, seesmis, or hootsuite. You can have multiple columns open, so you can see the chat, mentions of you, and your normal timeline/homepage.

And technological oopsy

A few of you noticed I'd posted two new Moda Bake Shop projects but they hadn't shown up when you tried to open them.
This was my fault.
They weren't supposed to be posted yet but my new laptop has a publish key right next to the shift key and while writing them I accidentally hit the publish key. Because of the rules for Bake Shop I had to delete the posts.
The Giddy tutorial will be posted February 5th and the Batik Wave one is yet to be determined for a date.

I'm sorry if you were disappointed that the patterns weren't posted but they will be coming soon and are worth the wait!

Nation Delurk Day and other quilty things

So apparently today is National Delurking Day, which means all you who read and should leave a comment letting me know!

No? Well fine then. **humph**

I feel like I'm getting nothing done lately because I haven't been able to share much. I'm working on Moda Bake SHop patterns, a few which will be for sale patterns, and of course Stitchin Heaven's club patterns.

I wanted to remind everyone of Talkin Tuesday, the Tuesday night twitter chat I host every week. It's a lot of fun, we chat quilting, sewing, fabric, and really anything that comes up. And there are always fantastic prizes, pretty much every week our sponsors giveaway precut fabric!! You really need to come join in. It starts at 9pm EST and lasts about 2 hours. This coming Tuesday is sponsored by Stitchin Heaven and I know you won't want to miss the prizes! Niki is giving away a layer cake, 2 charm packs, and a jelly roll! Really! So make sure to join us!!!

Jelly Roll Winner!

WOW that was a lot of entries! I read each and every comment and people have a lot of cool things planned for this year! I'm sorry I didn't get to respond to everyone but I really enjoyed reading all your comments.

The winner of the Pure jelly roll is..... Jennifer!

Congrats! E-mail me your address and I'll send it off to you!

Stitchin Howday Blog Hop!

Welcome everyone from over on Stitchin Heaven's blog! I'm excited as always to be part of anything Niki puts on, she really is just such a fun gal.

  As you know I'm now designing both the Charm School and Perse-Anality's monthly patterns and I couldn't be more excited!! I want you all to love your clubs so if you have any suggestions or requests be sure to let me know and I'll see what I can do!
 

 The upcoming months will be very fun, with Charm School using Central Park, Oasis, and Lilac Hill! These designs are already circling their way into a pattern and I think you'll love how different and unique each pattern is.







We've got a flickr group going for Perse-Anality and if you post a pic of your finished project before Feraury 9th you get entered into a draw for a Pure layer cake! How awesome is that? You get a very fun purse and a chance to win a layer cake!! Too bad I can't win!



Also I've started up a Facebook account for CaraQuilts and I'd love you to friend me!

What else I'm up to

  I don't remember if I've told you before or not but I'm now the in house designer for Stitchin Heaven's bag of the month club, Perse-Anality, and their Charm School!

I provide a unique pattern for each club, that is only available to club members, once a month!

Here's the charm pattern for January

Here's a post over at Stitchin Heaven Howdy that has links and gives more detail info on the clubs!

200 Followers!! Over 300 Posts! Time for a giveaway!

Holy smokes! I have 200 followers here on my blog! And I just realized my 300th post was awhile back!
So I do believe I'm going to have a giveaway!
For so many reasons Pure is one of my all time favorite lines! So I'm going to giveaway a jelly roll of it!

To enter
1) Leave me a comment telling me what you want to do this year!
2) For an additional entry follow me on Twitter! ( you can find the button on my sidebar)
3) Become or be a follower here on the blog!

Leave a separate comment for each entry!

I'll draw on Monday January 10th.

Parade for Prairie Point Tree Quilts

Go check out Sinta and Sherri's blogs for a parade of my Prairie Point Christmas Tree pattern.
It was their December Le Petit project and they all look fantastic! So different too.

It is so humbling to see a pattern of mine made by so many people. I can't tell you how wonderful it feels that someone likes a pattern enough to spend both the time and money to make it. I really am so blessed to be able to be a part of this wonderful thing called quilting.

Happy New Year!!

From my family to you and yours may your heart always be fuller than your purse and may you always have dreams to aspire.