Giveaway Winner and April Block of the Month

Yaaay! Using the Random Number Generator at Random.org I've picked the winner for the free Julie Herman pattern giveaway! First here's the (lucky or unlucky, however you look at it) number:

And counting down 13 on my blog comments, I come to Jennifer! She blogs over at Hoodies and Flipflops
if you wanted to go say hi. Congrats, Jennifer! If you'll send me your address, I'll pass it on to get the pattern to you.

I've also been working on the block of the month for my quilt guild. It's all online, if any of you wanted to follow along, or even if you just want to try a block or two. Not quite as . . . vivid . . . as it appears in this picture, let me introduce Block two of the Sweet Sixteen series:

And a graphic for what it looked like when I drew it up in EQ. Here's the website page with the instructions and fabric cutting directions for the April 2011 block of the month. Enjoy! And if you decide to try this block, I'd love to see a picture of the finished project.

Raspberry Desserts and Giveaways!

Well, here it is, the reveal date for the second Quiltmaker Scrap Squad project. I'm glad I was picked to be on this team, it's been lots of fun so far. For the last two months, we've been working on a pattern by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. This one is called Raspberry Desserts (she did it in pinks and creams) but if you'll click around the other scrap squad blogs, you can see that it looks great both color controlled and scrappy! She also has some wonderful patterns on her site that look great in scrappy, look around while you're there.

I decided to do mine with a dark background, rows of blocks with jewel tone colors bordering scrappy insides. Then I used the same fabrics in the scrappy braided border:

Mine's not quilted yet - and before I send it off to my longarmer, I may add another braided border all the way around. I used my Accuquilt GO! to cut the chisel shapes that became the braid, and it was SO easy to cut the right and left shapes. And addictive, almost hypnotic, to keep sewing the braid, chaining them through the machine.

I also changed the setting of the Julie's blocks - instead of putting them on point with setting triangles, I set them square. I think it would have been neat to do them with smaller strips too, really scrappy against white, maybe I'll try that someday.

Now for the Giveaways!

Julie has given the eight of us on the scrap squad each a pattern to give away FREE. So comment on my blog between now and April 4 (that gives you a week to comment) then I'll use a random number generator to pick one of you to receive the pattern. Make sure your response is set so I can reply to your comment if you win! Then go hop around the scrap squad blogs and comment on theirs too (links on my sidebar) for MORE chances to win a free pattern.

AND it doesn't stop there!

Quilty Pleasures blog, over at quiltmaker.com, is having a fabric giveaway. Yup, FABRIC! Run over there and follow the instructions to be entered for that too!