Quilty Secrets

I have been keeping a secret for about 2 months now, and it is killing me! I have been feeling like I could burst because I wanted to TELL people, but it was too soon.  I did tell a few local friends, but they don't quilt, so they didn't see why I was so excited.   Sooo... before I let you in on the secret, a little background information is in order.

While I was working on my Scrap Addicts projects, I was fooling around with layouts for blocks.  As I moved the different pieces around, I suddenly saw a layout for a 12 inch block that I didn't recall seeing before.  The combination of fabric placement and the orientation of the blocks made a really cool graphic design.  I looked in all the quilt block reference books that I have to see if anyone had published it before, and what it was called.  

I didn't see it anywhere.  Hmmm, that started me thinking about Quiltmaker Magazine's 100 Blocks series.  I grabbed all the issues that I have (all but Volume 1; somehow, I missed that one :-<)  Anyway, I looked through the 10 issues that I do have.  And I didn't see anything exactly like the one I came up with in any of those issues either. I looked through 1,000 blocks, and there was nothing exactly like mine.

As an aside, it is amazing to think that there are over 1,000 unique quilt blocks, not counting all the ones in the quilt block reference books.  Wow, that is mind boggling!  I wonder how many other un-dreamed-up blocks are out there waiting to be discovered?

So, back to the topic.  I took a deep breath and submitted my block to Quiltmaker to see if they would accept it for publication in an upcoming issue.  I never really thought that they would, but I figured that it was worth a shot.  

A couple of weeks went by, and I put it out of my mind.  Then, one day I received an email from Quiltmaker that started with "Congratulations"!!!!! 

They accepted my block!!!!!!  SSSSQQUUEEEEL!!!!  My husband came running because he thought that I had somehow hurt myself, LOL!  I was so excited that I could just point at the email and couldn't say a word.  He read it and said something along the lines of "oh, that's nice".  NICE??  Men! (humph).

My block is going to be published in Volume 12, which is due to come out in November!  Stay tuned, I am going to have a giveway in conjunction with the blog tour!  I'm not sure what exactly it will be, but it will be fun!