Guess what showed up in my Mail Box today!!!

Wow, was this ever a surprise!  I came home from work today to the usual piles of bills and junque mail.  There was a package and I thought it might be some fabric I ordered for a quilt I am working on.  But when I opened it up there was a HUGE surprise.  MONTHS and months ago I made a set of placemats to send in to my magazine publisher, DRG.  They were doing a book on making quilts using precuts and I did a set of placemats with my super simple placemat and napkin pattern.
Well, the placemats came home along with this:

This is the book!!!  Jump Start Your Quilting by House of White Birches.  Can you believe it.  They sent me a copy!!  Click on the book title to buy a copy.  But what was even cooler. . . look at this:

There are the placemats and the pattern!!!  OMG  They actually published them!  I was so excited.  It was so long ago that I sent these in and never heard any more about it.  Then out of the blue, nearly a year later, the book is released!  And they sent me back my placemats!!  WOW

And if you look close you can even see my name on page 82! And they even published the instructions.

Now this is not my first published pattern, and it is not even my first pattern to be published in a book!  And I was paid for this design months ago.  So why am I so excited??!!????   Because I am one publication closer to my dream of being a “real” quilt designer and actually having people “SEE” my work and “BUY” it!  Whooo hooooo! 
You know what this means don’t you?  That my days as a college professor teaching speech to Native American students are numbered.  That my role as acting assessment coordinator will be coming to an end in the foreseeable future. 
Today I had to teach a full day of assessment training to faculty during our Faculty In-Service.  Of course I always include a new quilt as part of the presentation.  But I was so stressed about the day that I forgot to bring a quilt!!!!  So I told them that they would have to listen to quilt story instead of seeing one.  I told them how I will have a pattern in every issue of Quilter’s World this year and they were all impressed.  The point of telling them, I said, was so that they would learn this stuff, because I was retiring in three years to quilt full time and they were going to be SOL if they didn’t pay attention.   PHEW!!!!  I was worried that I might have to stay beyond the 3 years. . . .but this package in the mail renewed my faith that I can do this.  Ok, sorry for the ramble.  I try not to wax philosophical on here, but today was just one of those days.  Don’t get me wrong, I have loved my 30 years as a college professor and I definitely love teaching Native American students.  But I want the next 30 years to be as a professional quilt designer instead of as a professional public speaking and rhetorical criticism teacher.
Ok, since you made it through the rant. here are some more pictures!  LOL


Thanks for hanging in there!!  Hey, I have some Fat Quarters left from this Line of Fabric.  Want to win them????  They will be this month’s prize for the posting a picture of your version of the Jewels BOM for February in the Jewels BOM album on FLICKER.  Now THAT is really cool.