Please join me in welcoming Jennifer Schifano Eutsler of Curlicue Creations as today’s guest blogger. Jennifer is sharing a few of her vintage sewing tools from her collection. She’s also doing a give-away of one of her patterns if you help her name the button dolly shown below.

Hello everyone. I’m Jennifer Schifano Eutsler, and I am so excited to be a guest blogger for the Quilting Gallery this week. First, let me just say how much I love the Quilting Gallery web site. They have so many great contests and give-aways. I’ll be having one today at the end of my post. My favorite feature at the Quilting Gallery is the blog locator. I love how you can look up bloggers by country or state. I haven’t come across anywhere else on the web where you can do that. I have been writing my own blog for about eight months, now. You can keep up with what I’m doing regularly at Curlicue Creations.

One of my passions is collecting vintage sewing items. I believe I have enough to start a small museum dedicated to sewing and quilting. I’m going to show a few of them here, but you can view many more at my Facebook photo albums. Someday I would like to have a facility for the museum, but for now, I have the world wide web.

It all started with an iron. Years ago, maybe 20 or so, I started to look at antique irons at the flea market. They intrigued me. I wanted one, but not badly enough to pay the $20.00 to $30.00 price tag. After years of casual searching, I found one for $4.00, and so the collecting began. This photo shows that first iron, along with the current project I’m quilting on, a Frosty table runner. Now I have twenty or so irons! Sad irons, antique irons, toy irons, decorative irons, etc. I thought I might be a little crazy. Who has an iron collection?

Eventually, my collection grew to include other things. Here are a few of my favorites, along with some of my quilting projects.

My Singer Featherweight 221. I love it. My fiance found this at a yard sale and didn’t really know what it was. He bargained them down to $4.00. I couldn’t believe it! The quilt in the photo is my Ice Pellets quilt. Also shown in the photo is the oil can and accessories box.

Roosevelt’s New Deal Needle Book. This is from the 1930s. I love this because of the history associated with it. It still has most of the needles inside. One of the needles is threaded with some twine. I have to wonder how long the twine has been in there, and what it was used for. The photo also shows my Checkerboard Cat quilt block.

Singer wooden accessories box. This box unfolds in a really unique way, as you can see. It is shown open in the photo. It is stamped “Patented February 18, 1889″. My box still contains most of the original accessories. The quilt in this photo is one of my firsts, a Bowtie quilt – all hand quilted and still one of my favorites.

Now, for my giveaway. I’ll be giving away a copy of my Checkerboard Cat quilt block pattern to the winner. You can see it at my shop, Curlicue Creations. I recently acquired an adorable button dolly. See her photo? She needs a name.

To enter the give-away: Leave a comment below suggesting a name for button dolly, and I will pick a winner next Tuesday, Jan. 17th.

Thanks so much for reading. It’s great to meet new quilters. Until next time…have a super day!

Jennifer – Curlicue Creations

Update: The winner of the dolly naming contest is #19 Cora who wrote:

Love your projects and especially the block pattern you’re giving away. Thank you for sharing your antique sewing items, I love the Roosevelt Needle Book. I’d name your doll Candy Cane or Pepper Mint. She is so cute!

An email is being sent to you from Jennifer.

The theme for this week’s quilt contest is New Beginnings. As this is an open-ended theme, each quilter can interpret what the theme means to them.

Our friends from the Fat Quarter Shop have generously donated two $25 gift certificates for the contest winners.

Fat Quarter Shop

In lieu of new beginnings and a new year we have a new Designer Mystery! If you have not heard of our Designer Mystery Block of the Month program, each year we pick 12 of your favorite designers to design one block each. Each month you receive one block to complete and the fun part is you won’t know what you are getting until it arrives! We do give you some sneak peeks like this so you know what to sort of expect…

The 2012 Designer Mystery uses Bonnie & Camille’s adorable Vintage Modern collection and this year all 12 block designers are among Moda Fabrics design stars. The programs runs from June 2012 – May 2013 for a whole year of excitement! Oh ya, and yes you can claim your spot now!

As for new beginnings it is time to swap out some of your old fabric stash for some new so we will be donating two $25 gift certificates to the Fat Quarter Shop for this week’s contest winners.

Good Luck!
The Fat Quarter Shop team

Enter the Contest

Get your cameras out! To enter the weekly contest, read the rules and guidelines, then submit your quilt photo by Thursday evening (EST). Voting will start on Friday and last until Sunday night.

Weekly Quilt Contest Links

• Guidelines
• Submit your photo
• 2012 Themes, Winners & Sponsors
• Sponsor a contest – Opportunities for 2012 now available

Last Week’s Quilt Contest

Thanks to everyone who entered last week’s Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along Blocks contest. Everyone that entered received both copies of the Quilter’s Cookbooks. Congratulations to the top two winners of the contest:

Dawn Duperault

Angela M.

Hi everyone,

Did you have a chance to listen live to my interview on Pat Sloan’s Radio Show? If you missed the live show, you can listen to it here or via Itunes too.

On the show, I shared some of the plans for 2012 here at the Quilting Gallery. Here’s what’s planned:

I’ll be hosting 4 swaps this year, one each quarter. Registration for our first swap New Beginnings will start later this week. This will be an open-ended mini quilt swap where each quilter is free to interpret the theme as they wish. The other swaps planned for this year include projects designed specifically for the swap by Sandi Andersen, Lenna Green and Jennifer Ofenstein.

The Blog Hop Party we did last year was so much fun. Thanks to everyone’s feedback, I’ll be hosting four events this year. The first one will start around Valentine’s Day with others planned for April, August and November.

Our Weekly Themed Quilt Contests will continue for the third year. See the 2012 themes. You can submit a quilt for this week’s New Beginnings contest.

I really enjoyed last year’s Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along. I plan to host a Spring Garden quilt-along starting sometime in April or May. Also, the Super Deals were very popular and I’m thrilled to announce that they’ll continue starting next Wednesday. More information will be posted on the site later this week.

I also have plans to create a 3rd edition of the Quilter’s Cookbooks. This one will feature quick and easy Summertime recipes.

More FUN things will be announced later in the year.

The Learning Center

Last but certainly not least, I’m extremely excited to be working with Pat Sloan on a new section for the site, called The Learning Center. I have known Pat since I first started this site and had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time in Nashville in 2008.

Over the years, we’ve seen each other at various shows and communicate regularly. She’s been a great mentor to me and always so eager and willing to share her advice and perspective whenever I’ve asked. We’ve been talking about doing something together for almost 2 years, and finally we start.

While Pat will be the hostess and organizer for The Learning Center, it’s really all about you. Pat will be organizing guest experts, sharing her own experience and links to fabulous tutorials and other useful information. We’ll be having linky parties, featured products, Q&A sessions and more. Each month, I’ll also be organizing and writing a couple of the posts.

Pat’s organized the draft agenda for the entire first year, and let me just say it’s EXCITING! Each month has its own theme. February is Storage and Organization and March will be Quilting Basics.

There will be a new tab at the top of the site for The Learning Center, where all the posts and resources will be stored. As we start to get content entered into the site and build up this section, it will become a super-organized resource for quilters of all levels.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new section and that you’ll share your own knowledge and participate. At the middle of each month, we’ll announce the next month’s theme and we will be asking for volunteers to guest write, answer questions, share their tips, etc.

Now, I’ll let Pat take over and tell you the plans for February…

From Pat:

I’m really excited to have you join Michele and I for our Fabulous new Learning Center section! The February topic is near and dear to my heart, organization! I know we talk a lot about it and people are always looking for the best solutions that fit their work style.

I believe we can all find a solution that works for us by sharing ideas! All during February you will find links, tips, interviews and ideas for how to proceed with organizing your studio space.

We want your ideas! Have you written a post on your own blog, seen a really clever storage/organization idea online or have your own ideas on fabric, notions & thread storage, project organization (including BOMs), and digital organization (what to do with all those free tutorials and patterns)? Send Michele or Pat an email.

If you have a specific organization/storage-related question leave a comment, or email it to us, and we’ll try and get you an answer!

Also, at the end of February we’ll be having a linky party where you get to show off your own creative space. Take before photos, organize, organize, organize and take after photos. You’ll write a blog post on your own blog and link it up in our linky party.

Give-Away: Share your Ideas for The Learning Center

We’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts about The Learning Center. What do you want to see included? Is there something quilting-related that you struggle with and need help? How should the Center be organized so that as it grows, it becomes a useful resource guide that you can refer back to?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts and suggestions. I have two free gift certificates from The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims to give away. One is for a free 6-month membership that is good for a new member only. The other is for one past online series of the show. I believe this certificate is open to both new and current members (I hope).

Two winners will be chosen randomly next Wednesday, January 18th.