We picked a winner for our giveaway that wraps up the Country Girl Modern Blog Hop.

That winner is….Jeri who said, “I don’t have a blog of my own as I’m just a beginner but yours is truly my favorites! I love antiques, learning to quilt and all 6 of my kids and 9.5 grandbabies. I have loved watching you remodel your very own new house and seeing all the antiques and original woodwork kept in place! You are living my dream, thus I live vicariously through you and your family. What an amazing husband you have! Mine can fix any small tool like a jigsaw, portaband saw, jigsaw ect ect but as far as honey do’s forget about it! I have a handyman for all the house repairs. I’ll take a happy surprise gift from you & will be grateful for it too, but I’ll be just as grateful getting to see the latest upgrades to your beautiful forever home. BTW I grew up in Des Moines till I was 15, been 39yrs. But I love Texas now it is my home forever now. God Bless you and your wonderful, helpful husband and kids.”

Each of the blogs that participated have announced their winners on their blogs so if your weren’t notified, I’m sorry to say, you aren’t a winner.  We so wish we could give away books to each of you.  I’ve often thought it would be fun to be Oprah and say, “A book for you, and for you, and for you!”

We got lots of orders during the hop and heard from several of you saying if you didn’t win you were going to order…well, you can order away.  The UPS man just delivered a fresh shipment yesterday.  Here’s the link to our order information.   That page will stay up so you can order anytime.

Thanks again to everyone for hopping along with us and a HUGE thanks to Mary from Country Threads, Michelle from Michelle’s Romantic Tangle, Julie for JulieK Quilts, Judy at Patchwork Times,  Mary at Quilt Hollow, Moda’s Cutting Table, Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Paulette at Sweet P and Bonnie at Quiltville you gals are amazing!!

Sadly the days of the blog hop are coming to an end.  So far we’ve been to lots of great places.  Today we have another great place for you to stop Sweet P Quilting and Creations with Paulette.

How I found Pautette’s blog is kind of odd as Paulette found me first.  About two years ago Kelli and I were looking at the blog and working to see how to increase the traffic on the blog.  We put so much time into blogging so we wanted to make the most of our time and try to find a way to pay for the expense that comes with blogging through adding advertising on the blog. Blogging is a great hobby but neither Kelli or I want blogging to cost our family any money (Click on this link if you missed  my explanation on how bloggers make money)  Anyway we figured if we could increase our traffic we’d hopefully get enough advertising money to cover the costs of blogging.

We decided to take a closer look at our statistics for the blog.  We looked at traffic trends…We can pinpoint times of the day when we have the most readers.  We looked at how much traffic we get each day.  We looked at where the traffic comes from.  In the process we saw that we were getting quite a big of traffic from “Sweet P’s” blog.  Kelli asked if I knew of the blog and I said no…So we went over and looked..and now we’re hooked!

One of the things I love about Paulette’s blog is that first off..she’s a regular blogger.  She posts something most every day.  I love going to blogs with new fresh content.

Another thing I love is that Paulette, unlike me, gets out and goes places!  She’s an RV gal and is often on some sort of adventure…shop hopping, garage sale-ing, an quilting get togethers and the like.  I live a little big vicariously through her.  You can bet that I was cheering on her recent garage sale steal when her and a friend bought this Pfaff for a measly $20! (photo from Paulette)

Paulette is always sharing pictures of quilt shop tours.  I never get to quilt shops anymore.  I miss seeing all the great samples…but Paulette shares all of that with her readers.  She does the same with her clubhouse get togethers sharing photos of her friends’ projects.  They are always fun to see…

I was just drooling over the pictures she shared while visiting Primitive Gatherings California shop.  Like Paulette, I love wool projects…the only difference, she actually gets some done…actually she get lots of them done and they are all so cute.

I imagine myself hanging with Paulette at the store for two hours.  To be honest, I’m surprised it was only two.  I think I was there at their small book at market for two hours….anyway..I love checking out her wool projects.

Paulette is often working on projects I’d love to be brave enough to try…..like her awesome Clam Shell quilt.

I love it!

If you haven’t been make sure to check to our Paulette’s blog…not just to win a copy of our book that she’s giving away but also to do like I do and live vicariously…

The days are winding down of the blog hop.  Tomorrow is the last day and we’ll give you one last try to try to win a copy of our book.  If you missed one of our blog hop stops, you can still hop over…Here’s a listing.  Mary from Country Threads, Michelle from Michelle’s Romantic Tangle, Julie for JulieK Quilts, Judy at Patchwork Times,  Mary at Quilt Hollow, Moda’s Cutting Table, Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Bonnie at Quiltville.

We’ve been hopping for a week now and are slowly coming to end of our hop…don’t stop hopping yet though.  We have two more spots to hop.  So far you should have met Mary from Country Threads, Michelle from Michelle’s Romantic Tangle, Julie for JulieK Quilts, Judy at Patchwork Times,  Mary at Quilt Hollow, Moda’s Cutting Table and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

So where to today you ask…we’re off to Quiltville with Bonnie Hunter.  Bonnie really needs no introduction.  If you’ve been reading quilting blogs for any length of time, you’ve likely stumbled across Bonnie’s site. When I was first reading blogs Bonnie’s is one that I stumbled one and continued going back and back and back.  I still go back.

I love Bonnie’s MANY-MANY free patterns….speaking of which the quilt that she currently has on her quilting frame is one I really want to make. (photo stolen from Bonnie)

Awesome right??  If you’re a scrappy quilt gal like I am, it’s one that’s hard to resist.  Best yet, Bonnie has free directions for the block here.

My current project, Pineapple Crazy, is a Bonnie Hunter design.  You can find it her String Fling book.

I remember several years ago I was combing through Bonnie’s calendar hoping she’d be somewhere in my area and found she’d be teaching in Storm Lake, Iowa.  That’s a 4.5 hour drive for me.  I was chicken to go myself and tried to talk Kelli into going.  At the time, Kelli was barely a quilter and thought I was a little crazy.  She was up for a get away though and we went.

I am so glad we did.  I really think that was the start of us wanting to work together…the couple days of staying together and the long drive was a great bonding experience for us.

We saw Bonnie again in Moline, Illinois…another long drive for us but we had fun and it was so worth it!

We started looking for future calendar dates that we could see Bonnie but didn’t see any in her calendar so we booked her and will be holding our own retreat featuring Bonnie in our area a the end of July this year….how “stalker-ish” is that?!

Anyway…you can see that we are Bonnie Hunter fans…Honestly, if you love her on the blog, you’ll love her even more in person.  She’s a ball of energy and honestly a truly fun person.

One of the most challenging quilts I’ve made is her Perkimon Daydreams quilt.  (Find the pattern in Scraps and Shirttails I)

If I’m not sewing a quilt we designed it’s more than likely Bonnie designed it.  That’s one of biggest compliments I can give…she’s our favorite designer!

On a related note, if you hopped over to Moda’s Cutting Table and read Carrie’s review you’ll see that she mentioned loving the Quick Reference directions in our book.  We can’t take credit for that at all.  As we were putting the book together we looked at lots and lots and lots of quilt books.  We were told to tell them what we would like for our book.  Immediately both of us wanted an easy to read and understand directions….(photo credit to Moda’s Cutting Table)  This Quick Reference Chart idea came from Bonnie.  She has done that it all of her later books.  We love this when using her books and reference it all the time.  We asked our editor if it was okay to use this similar format and were given the thumbs up sign so we did.  We love it!!  Thanks Bonnie for thinking is all up.

So hop on over to the site of a master quilter, blogger, author, quilt designer, traveler, teacher and just plain out fun person….Quiltville with Bonnie Hunter!

Merrily we hop along, hop along, hop along…merrily we hop along to some amazing blogs!!  So far you should have met Mary from Country Threads, Michelle from Michelle’s Romantic Tangle, Julie for JulieK Quilts, Judy at Patchwork Times and Mary at Quilt Hollow.

Today you’re getting a double dose with TWO places to hop to.  This morning I told you about Moda’s Cutting Table.  Now I’m telling about someone who has a cause that is near and dear to my heart…charity quilting and that blog is Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  The anchor of the blog is Sarah…and what a generous, giving gal she is!

Sarah is always organizing other quilters, teaching new quilters and getting quilts finished and given for charity.  I am always in awe of all that she is able to get done.

Each week Sarah always has several quilts that her hands have touched and she’s worked to get the quilts passed on to those needing a comfort.

Sarah started a new project and that’s helping her daughter’s family raise money to adopt a little boy from China.  She’s been making quilts and raffling them off as part of her money raising efforts.  She’s been a really success at that too.  You can read about the story here.

I first got to know about Sarah’s blog when my friend Michelle told me about her well known linky party on Fridays, “Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?”  It’s a fun linky party where bloggers link up their blogs showing progress that they made on projects over the last week.  It’s a big party and lots of fun.

Earlier this year Sarah launched her Sweet 16 Quilt Along.  It’s been fun to follow.  She’s shown readers how to make a simple 16 patch block then over the next few weeks Sarah’s shown readers how to set the blocks in a variety of different quilts.  I have to say, I love them all.  They aren’t hard quilts and all unique…perfect for gift giving or for donation quilts.  Read more about the Sweet 16 Quilt Along and see the fun quilts by following this link.

I love this Sweet 16 quilt.  Sarah wrote a tutorial for here.  I am thinking this might be the quilt I make for a summer wedding we have.

Sarah is extra busy right now organizing her annual Hands2Help Charity quilt drive.  She encourages readers to sign up and make quilts for charities.  Prizes are involved so you’ll want to check that out.

…she really is a busy, busy gal!!  I can’t express how much I admire her.

Sarah is the one who inspired me to offer to machine quilt tops that blog readers sent to me and then pass the quilts on to charities.  I’ve found that so rewarding and I can’t thank Sarah enough for being such an awesome role model to us all.  We are so lucky to have her as our mentor!!

So hop on over to Sarah’s Confession of a Fabric Addict.