So my second book, The Quilter's Paper Piecing Workbook, has started to ship a whole month early, and I'm so excited!!!! I'm incredibly proud of this book, so I wanted to take a moment this morning to show you a few sneak peeks of some of the things I love most about it.

Guess what else I did while I was pregnant...wrapped up my second book! The Quilter's Paper Piecing Workbook was a big-time labor of love, chock full of helpful tips and tricks for paper piecing with ease, with gorgeous patterns to boot, and it's now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Quilt Market is coming up again in just over a month, and I'm going to be doing a schoolhouse and book signing during my stay in Houston. Eek! I'm both excited and frightened by the prospect of this. First off, can I actually talk for 30 minutes coherently about my book? I hope so. I need to write myself some talking points to keep me from veering off-topic and spending 22 minutes talking about my love for Denyse Schmidt's fabrics or something related and oh-so-not-related all at the same time. Secondly, I'm going to need to work on practicing my signature. Seriously! I have the signature of a seventeen year old boy who's going to grow up to be a doctor - sloppy, mostly illegible and not at all what you would call pretty.

Now thirdly, I have something to finish preparing that's way more fun for Market, and pretty, too - a mini-quilt that I plan to give away to one lucky attendee of my schoolhouse! I had a terrible time trying to decide which quilt I wanted to do in a mini, and after a ton of deliberation, I decided I wanted to do Polaris, a really fun, scrappy Ohio star quilt that focuses on teaching sewing quarter-square triangle units and making them as easy as possible.

Polaris quilt from my book, Becoming a Confident Quilter photo courtesy of Martingale & Co

For my mini, I made four blocks, so it came together quite quickly over the weekend. I started with a color palette that I was really digging, pulled some scraps and fat quarters based on it, and got to pressing and cutting. It felt good to just have some fun with fabric and some good tunes.


The best part was that I had good company while I was digging through my scraps - my munchkin loves to play in my scrap bins, and put random combinations up on my design wall. Yesterday he actually wanted to mimic what I was piecing, which was fun. He kept asking me to cut more triangles for him so he could create new patterns. I loved the way he kept trying to sing along with the songs on my playlist, that was adorable.


I'm definitely planning to sew up some more minis, pillows, and quilts from my book soon, and I cannot believe that it starts shipping tomorrow. I'm hoping to get my first box of books soon so I can fulfill the pre-orders that many of you placed at my Pattern Shop. If you still want to pre-order a copy, you can do so right here or at Amazon - or you can pick up the latest issue of Quilt Sampler and take the $10 Martingale rebate form found inside on page 121 to your local quilt shop to pick up my book and get a great deal at the same time!

Stay tuned tomorrow for more book pictures, I'm so excited to finally be sharing them! Have a great day today :)

Someone get the smelling salts, will you? It's been an epic week full of happy tears at my house - with the munchkin's first day of kindergarten on Monday, and then with a super big arrival in my mailbox yesterday. Hot off the presses, I opened up an advance copy of my book yesterday!!! Seriously, talk about happy mail!


I'm not even sure how to describe what it feels to hold a real copy of my book in my hands. It feels more real than it did when it just a huge Word doc on my computer, that's for sure. I feel...elated...proud...tickled...amazed...my emotions absolutely are all over the place. I cannot wait to share more about the book right here, very soon. Here's what I can tell you so far - this book has something for everyone, from a new quilter to an experienced quilter. I hope that my love for quilting comes across in both the text and the quilts that I made for the book. I can't wait to show them all after all this time! Most of the quilts were made back in the spring of 2012, so I'm just bursting to share them!


Want to pick up a copy for yourself? Or your best friend? Or your entire quilt guild?? ;) My book is scheduled to begin shipping on September 10th, so I've only got this one copy for the moment. You can preorder a copy from my Pattern Shop as well as Amazon, and you'll find the book in many quilt shops next month. I know I can't wait! Have a great day today :)

Guys, my book is officially available for pre-order on Amazon ! Wowza, this whole writing-a-book-thing just got really real!

Amazon also has a few sneak peeks of the quilts that are in the book as well, which is extra fun to see since I haven't seen them in so long. I actually sat down last night and looked through a lot of the photos I took while I worked on the book, and they just made me smile. Like this photo, taken when I was working on the scrap quilt in my book (preview photo up on Amazon !) - this whole quilt makes me smile, but just going through the photos and seeing the quilts come together made me feel really proud of how hard I worked, how much of me I put into this book.

And after many requests, I've also listed my book for pre-order in my Pattern Shop. All books purchased through my Pattern Shop will be autographed, and should be shipped out on or around September 10th, via USPS Priority Mail.

Here's hoping I manage to get some sewing time in today - summer is already beginning to steal my sewing mojo a bit. Have a fantastic day!

I have started and deleted and started this post over at least five times now, so maybe the sixth time's the charm...I have really something big to tell you guys. I kind of wrote a book.


I really did write a book. Omg, omg, I can hardly believe it. Becoming a Confident Quilter will be out this September and it's chock full of tips, techniques, and exercises to stretch and build your quilting skills. There are fourteen quilt patterns, and I can't wait to show you every last one of them, but I have to keep them under my hat for now.

I can tell you this much - I've wanted to be an author since I was six years old. I still have the very first book I ever wrote, a delightful tale I called Bunnies, about a family of bunnies, so this is a really big deal to me. It nearly makes me cry when I think of the idea of running into a copy of my book in reality at a bookstore someday in the not-too-distant future. I cannot begin to tell you how much this whole experience has meant to me, and I can't wait to share more about it with all of you, including loads of pictures and stories about the quilts over the next several months. Suffice it say, I'm beyond excited. And proud. And joyful. It's a good day :)