I’m packing like a mad woman getting ready to fly to Houston for Quilt Market, and at the last minute, I’ve received some super exciting news! While I was in Des Moines, I submitted a book proposal to the executive book editor for AQS, and I was excited to read What a Great Show on the AQS Publishing Blog. The pertinent part of that post was this:

My week was spent meeting authors old, new and wanna-be, and every single one was delightful. We received interesting proposals and scoured the vendors for what’s hot and what will be The Next Big Thing. Too much fun to call it work!

I spent the time since Des Moines, and especially since reading that blog post, hoping that my proposal was one of the “interesting” ones. The editor really seemed very receptive to my proposal and ideas when I met with her, and very friendly and easy to work with. I left our meeting feeling pretty good about it all, but you know how things like this are; sometimes you have the utmost confidence that it will all go your way, and other days are the exact opposite! Writing a book is a lot of work (and a lot of quilting!), but it’s something I’ve been working on and toward for a number of years now.

After what has seemed the longest week and a half ever, the editor emailed me this evening to say that AQS wants to publish my book!!! OMG! Can you believe it? I almost can’t! We were out for a family dinner at Wingers when I got the email, and I was so excited, I almost bounced out of my chair! I don’t know when it will be out (it’s not even ready to submit completely yet, of course), and I don’t know what they’ll decide the title will be or anything yet, but I couldn’t wait to share the news! The editor wrote in her email:

Congratulations! Bet you fly to Houston on your own steam!

She’s sure right about that! I’m off to finish packing now, and then go to bed since I have to be up soooo early for the flight, but I just know I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight! I won’t promise to blog from Houston (though I will try), but I will try to take lots of pics and notes to share when I get back…See you on the other side!

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One more stack of loot to share from the AQS Quilt Show in Des Moines:

Here we have a very mixed bag. From the top center:

• Beads! Couldn’t pass up the Miyuki beads since I’ve been wanting to see what all the fuss is about. Interestingly enough, though Miyuki beads are purported to be the “be all and end all” of high quality seed beads, I’ve kind of decided that I like plain old average seed beads just as well for my purposes. The Miyuki beads are TINY, as well as being more cylindrical and uniform, and while the uniformity doesn’t bother me, sometimes they’re too small (though maybe that’s just the combination of the colors that I have with the fabrics that I’m using them on at the moment), and the more rounded edges of a regular seed bead work better for what I’m trying to do than the cylindrical shape of the Miyuki beads. So now I know.
• Next are some hand printed fabric panels from Block Party Studios. These are really fun printed panels with sayings on them like
• The fabric is four fat quarters of Halloween type prints with holographic or iridescent overprinting which was just too unusual and fun to resist!
• The bundle in the middle is a few bits of hand punched, hand dyed wool fabric, and the curly stuff below it is also wool, hand dyed but more “au naturale” just as it came off the sheep. There was a booth that had all kinds of wools and other things for needle punch, and they had these overflowing bins of curly, colorful wool that you just grabbed what you wanted out of, and they sold it by weight. Think embellishments…
• The packets in the lower left corner are Painters Potpourri from Tentakulum, a German manufacturer. Each packet contains a paper-like background card, silk cocoons, a bit of silk fiber fabric stuff, and a hank of different fibers, all hand dyed in a coordinated colorway. These were too unique to pass up when I came across them in the YLI booth. I’m sure that any of you who are into the altered art or mixed media thing would know just what to do with these, but so far, I’m just admiring them. Their day will come though.
• Last we have the Bo-Nash bonanza bag. Bo-Nash was at the show with their newest products, a line of super fine glitters, Tonertex foils, glue pens and fabric adhesive in a fabulous squeeze bottle. I bought some of everything, and can’t wait to try it all out. I’m not sure it’ll be as “no-mess” as they claimed though.

Even that’s not quite all the loot from Des Moines, since we did spend one day at the local mall where I found the leather coat I’ve been searching for for years, and a pair of Anne Klein brown patent leather boots to die for. The boots were quietly waiting for me to discover them in the giant shoe department at Von Maur, but the coat positively screamed my name from across the store, and what could I do but answer the call? Everything else I bought is cool, but the coat was the best buy of the entire trip!

Believe it or not, I’m getting on the plane again on Thursday morning (yes, just 10 days after returning from Des Moines) for a super quick, four-day trip to Houston. Kimberly and I are going to Quilt Market to see whats new and news in the retail quilting world. I’m planning to make connections with distributors in preparation for stocking my new online shop which should be opening by the second quarter of 2009. My head is already spinning with products and plans, but I’m sure it’ll be doing a negative 4-g rolling dive by the time I get back!

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I gathered the loot from the AQS Show back up so I could share! Here’s the first batch:

Looking at it all now, I’m sure it’s not terribly exciting to anyone but me, but I’ll tell you what it all is anyway. From the top center, sort of counterclockwise, we have:

• Something called a Waterbrush, which you fill with water and then you can brush small amounts onto fabric or quilts. The folks selling it were using it with Caran D’ache colored pencils to make a watercolor effect (a bit of a strange technique that wasn’t quite ready for prime time, IMO), but I’m thinking it will be great for correcting mistakes with the blue washout marker, and it will probably come in handy for many other things at some point.
• I bought a strange and lethal-looking seam ripper thingy, after the vendor demonstrated how it could be used to cleanly slice through fabric layered between fusible web and freezer paper. Think fusible appliqué pieces.
• The Magic Bobbin Washers were something I’ve wanted to try, and the Lickity Grip is probably just an alternative to my favorite free motion machine quilting “get a grip” tool, the Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream. Worth a try to see if it’s better.
• A couching foot for my Bernina 440. This thing makes couching soooo much easier. You use it like a free motion quilting foot to stitch down cording and fibers to fabric.
• Some new embellishment glue and fabric markers that I haven’t tried before. It never hurts to try lots of different brands to see what’s best.
• I renewed my AQS membership, and they gave me free curved thread snips at the show. I love these thread snips and they’re at least $15, so that was a steal!
• I searched all over the show floor to find that little green thing there on the left. It’s the new flat needle threader from Clover, and I LOVE it. Works great for threading fibers through small needle eyes.
• I bought a couple of new types and brands of hand needles that I haven’t tried before. So far, I really like the Bohin Crewel Embroidery for embroidered embellishments on quilts. It’s nice and long and sharp, and pretty easy to thread with that new Clover threader.
• The clear box is a bead storage box from Embellishment Village. You can never have too many beads, until they outgrow your storage options, that is.

That’s it for the first round. My goal at the show was to catch up with (and buy) the new things that I’ve missed because I live here, and don’t see or hear about the new stuff until it’s old news most of the time. I’m off to try out some of the Loot! More to follow!

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