NEW NEW NEW quilt block swap

[teddy_rn]

WOW! We are on a roll!

Elizabeth and Bre are brilliant so I will be taking ALL of their advice that I can get! Depending on the number of people in the swap we will be in groups. Example:

- 10 people per group
- you can be in as many groups as you wish

Munchkinmaker: THANK YOU~Yes, 12.5" blocks.

The theme will be Christmas. You can decide what/how you want it. Some people like a piece of 12.5" fabric with a design, some prefer to quilt fabric with the theme fabric and no embroidery. All of the blocks from the last swab were varied and I could not/will not pick a favorite because I love them all! Hope to start work on the top within the week, have to finish one other top 1st!

Our list so far:

1. Quiltsilly
2. Artist Bree
3. tndenim
4. TeddyRN
5. klarina
6. Munchkinmaker
7. Naturechick
8. DollyJ

Hope we have enough participation that we can have 2-3 groups. I will jump on board for all groups because I need 36 blocks for my king size bed quilt

[stripe]

Okay, you have my attention, I now am in the empty nest season of my life as of June. I need to find something exciting to do. I have a few questions. 1. When you receive the blocks, do we get ours back, or do you mix them up and send us a variety of other peoples.
If it is the latter do we put our city, state or name on the square? 2. Where do we mail the squares to, and do we help you with the cost of shipping them back. 3. Do we work as a group to complete a quilt. I hope I am making sense, if not I will try again.

[artist_bre]

Stripe
This is how we did the swap last time and Deb will let us know what to do as this swap progresses. You make how many ever blocks as there are people. Then we send them to the moderator which is Deb (teddy_rn). She will then take pictures of them and sort them and send them back to all of us. Yes we usually make a name block with our name and state on it and pin one to each block so they know who made them. Last time they were 2 ½ “by 4 /1/2” . I am sure we will do this again.
As far as shipping goes when you send your package to Deb you should also have an extra padded envelope that you will have the post offices put the same amount of postage on and include that envelope in the one you send with the squares in it. That is what your squares will be returned in. We don’t work as a group to make the quilt because we are all over in a few different countries; you will make your own quilt top with the blocks you receive back. Deb will give everyone her address by email as soon as we get to that point.
Deb
I hope I said everything here the way you want to do the swap this time, I was speaking from how we did our last swap, so if anything I said is incorrect let me know hun.
Bre

[teddy_rn]

Bre you are my right hand!!! I could not have said/done better and would probably have forgotten half of it! Thank you!

Stripe you will be a very welcome addition to our group! I filled my empty nest with things like you are doing and found myself to be very crafty indeed! Not to mention you have lots of new treasures to show off.

[artist_bre]

Deb
Aww your making me blush . I just figured we were doing it the same way as last swap, and I knew you would appreciate any help.
Stripe
Come join us and have some fun. The ladies in this group sure make some beautiful blocks and I know you will be so happy to get them, just as we all were when we finished our last swap just recently. I am still showing mine off.
Bre

[quilt-silly]

Yay, you're already building a good group, Deb!

You might not have to break into sub-groups - even if you get 30-40 swappers, you can just have people make single blocks to swap instead of pairs. We made 32 or more blocks for the first swap, so with the extra time, making even 40 blocks will be a piece of cake. (And swapping out groups is ten times harder than swapping out a regular swap - make this easy on yourself!)

And for the mailing, I'd suggest that you not request SASE's, but rather have everyone reimburse you for postage and bubbleopes.

You can get the giant poly bubbleopes at Office Depot for about $2.00 each - they're tough and more protective of the soft goods inside than any plain paper envelope. You save time taping if you use poly or tyvek - you don't have to reinforce the outside of the envelope with tape.

You can print the postage on line and request a free postal carrier pickup for the next day. No standing in line at the post office, no different sized packages, all of them going at the same rate - much easier to handle.

When you print the postage online, the post office will pick up one package or fifty - at least one of them has to be Priority Mail or higher - all you have to do is leave them on your porch. Very cool.

[tndenim]

I can wait to get started on this one. I've just about figutred out how I'm going to complete the last ones into a quilt top.

And a Christmas theme - I'm already thinking hard about how to make my block. got a lot of ideas mulling around in this empty head of mine!!!

[srobins96]

Count me in..Just let me know how many blocks, size and theme..I am excited to be involved again..should be a blast..

SUE

[dollyj]

I just posted a note sharing my favorite quilt site, and I should have posted it a long time ago!!! Anyway....I tried to put the link and something totally different came up so you have to google it , www.quilerscache.com here goes another try!! Each page plays a different tune I know some don't like the music, they are old tunes and they are pretty but I know it can get obnoxious!!! Joyce

[teddy_rn]

Our list so far:

1. Quiltsilly
2. Artist Bree
3. tndenim
4. TeddyRN
5. klarina
6. Munchkinmaker
7. Naturechick
8. DollyJ
9. srobins96

Color me nuts but I want to keep ahead of this and every time I get a new name I have to add it or I will forget and/or get mixed up.

Even though I will be your hostess I know that the real brains behind this swap is ELIZABETH!! As a very smart lady I know who is the real brains! She is our savior and knows all the answers or where to find them.

[dollyj]

Sorry!!!! It still didn't come up right!
She has directions for picot edging , binding, peicing each block, and a picture of each block in a whole quilt so you can see what it would look like with all the same block. You have to use the arrow to go to quilt blocks galore for the blocks but there are a lot more things. Joyce

[boblynn55]

I too think I might like to try this - but I have questions that I think are different than those by others.

I am a bit confused by the name, city and State thing. Do we embroidery a separate piece the measurements that was listed in a previous post or do we include this on each block?

Of the two blocks per member do they have to all be the same (I think it might get boring to do that) or is two different blocks X the number of people or all kinds of different ones that fit the theme as long as there is enough total blocks?

Do we make and keep an extra block for ourselves or does the moderator take care of all that and send us back all the blocks we need for a quilt?

The theme is Christmas -- Are you thinking secular or Religious or does anything go. Can we request the moderator do one or the other for us or avoid certain theme like Santa Claus? I guess "Christmas" might be a pretty broad topic if you ask me. But what do I know I have never done this before.

I have done very little quilting -- more an heirloom sewer, but if you will have me I will like to try. Might have to ask lots of dumb questions though.

Lynn

[boblynn55]

Dollyj

Maybe there should be a t in this address, you had: quilerscache. Should it be www.quilterscache.com ???

Lynn

[teddy_rn]

Hi Lynn,
Yep, we asked all of those questions in the last swap

ANYTHING Christmas would be great!

I did a few blocks with one style then a different then another style because it gave me a chance to "play". You are right, it would get old doing the same thing over and over.

You only send the blocks for the swap; depending on how many participants we have. We will have a cut off date for adding people by mid Sept 09 because you don't want to keep adding and adding!

You will be a very welcome addition to our swap. I would love heirloom blocks, those must be awsome!

[SusieQ]

I am SEW SEW excited. I didn't know about the last one until too late but I'm not to late for this one! Count me in, in, in. (Yeah!)

[quilt-silly]

I am a bit confused by the name, city and State thing.

Let's see which way Deborah would like to do this.

You can either make a separate tag to be sewn onto the back of the quilt - like behind your block - or you can put the name and state info right on your blocks. An Identi-pen works well for this, or you can embroider it.

Of the two blocks per member do they have to all be the same (I think it might get boring to do that) or is two different blocks X the number of people or all kinds of different ones that fit the theme as long as there is enough total blocks?

It's up to Deb, but it looks like she's being as laid back about it as I am so I'm guessing she'll say to do whatever you want to do, as long as each blocks meets the criteria.

Do we make and keep an extra block for ourselves or does the moderator take care of all that and send us back all the blocks we need for a quilt?

You should keep your own blocks and send blocks for each other participant to the swapmeister.

The theme is Christmas -- Are you thinking secular or Religious or does anything go. Can we request the moderator do one or the other for us or avoid certain theme like Santa Claus? I guess "Christmas" might be a pretty broad topic if you ask me. But what do I know I have never done this before.

Christmas is a broad topic - but, to specify to the swapmeister that you don't want to receive any particular thing isn't practical and here's my (long-winded! ) explanation of why you can't do that.

The nature of the swap is pot-luck - you send in the correct number of your own blocks - whatever you wish them to be - and the swapmeister trades them all around with every other swapper. Ideally, there are just enough to go around, and if there is one block that another swapper won't like, there isn't anyone else to trade with. And if there are four or five or six swappers who send in blocks that the requestor doesn't want, the only alternative is to send back those four or five and return four or five of the requestor's own blocks to her. I hope that makes sense.

From the hostess's point of view, when you're swapping out everyones' blocks, you're trying to get them done as quickly as possible and still keep everything straight. It's tricky and if you get off-track, you could have to go back to the beginning and start all over. You don't want to have to do that - chances are that you are crawling all over the floor because the floor is the only open space big enough in which to lay out all the swap packages. You're hot and sweaty and if you make one more mistake, you're going to scream.... heheeeeee! (Ask me how I know! )

We have to be gentle with our hostess - she's saving us time and money and generating entertainment. If it weren't for a centralized swap hostess, people who wanted to do a swap would be mailing individual packages to 20 or 30 or 40 other people, instead of just one. There would always be at least one or two people who don't send anything and a central swapmeister weeds those out and keeps things fair. We want to be as easy on her as we can be.

I have done very little quilting -- more an heirloom sewer, but if you will have me I will like to try. Might have to ask lots of dumb questions though.

Ooooh, heirloom sewing! I haven't done much of that, but I sure love the look - I've bought books and patterns for it, but except for using my hemstitcher, I've never settled down long enough to get the hang of most of it. I do a lot of my sewing and quilting on treadle sewing machines from the turn of the 20th century, so it would be nice to turn out antique-style pieces.

No such thing as dumb questions - Deb will be the first to tell you that, and I think we all agree. No newbie is too new, no question is dumb. Hey, I'll deal with your questions if you can deal with my wordy, long-winded answers.

Hope you'll join us!

[quilt-silly]

Even though I will be your hostess I know that the real brains behind this swap is ELIZABETH!!

Not so, my friend! I'm your cheerleader this time and very happy to have someone else take the helm. If there's anything I can do to help, of course I will, but I'm sure you're going to get along just fine.

[SusieQ]

In the past when I've done exchanges we decided right at the beginning about whether we wanted white backgrounds or off-white backgrounds. We were just a small group of friends not as large and varied as this is . Is there a background color all are using or is that left up to the sorter to decide what goes together? I have lots of ideas spinning in my head and I can't wait to get started but I thought this was a pretty basic question.

[MrsBuckeye]

You said "Chanukah" swap, right ? *ducking*

[boblynn55]

Thanks Elizabeth for your answer. I don't mind long-winded, been called that my self. I am not big on the Santa thing is why I asked about that, but your reasoning is very sound now that I understand more how it is done. I quess I could make two quilts one with santas and one without. The Santa one could be used as a gift.
Thanks again,
Lynn