February Block

Today is (blog) moving day.

For information about the February block, visit the new Block Lotto blog:  Let's Play Hearts

Be sure to also check out the FQ bundle give away, sponsored by Julie D of The Intrepid Thread. (Yep, that's a carrot and I'm hoping you'll all follow us to blocklotto.com).

Status Updates

I've heard from three of our four winners.  SHELLEY, be sure to check for email from me and reply ASAP and confirm your mailing address and let me know how many of your own blocks you'd like to keep.

We will be moving to the new website and blog TOMORROW.  The February block will be posted on the new blog.  I also have a job interview tomorrow morning, so I may not be readily available to answer questions and resolve problems until the afternoon. Here are the three posts to help you get started:

Accounts and Author Privileges - If you didn't make blocks in January, you will need to request an account

First Things First - Setting a new password and updating your profile after your account is created

How to Post - A walk through the process of uploading photos and creating a blog post.

January 2012 Winners

And the winners of the January Block Lotto are.....

#1:  Linda N.
#2:  Kathy S.
#3:  Laura R.
#4:  Shelley

Congratulations ladies!  I can't wait to see how you put the blocks together!

Get Ready

I've sent the list of names for the drawing to Ellie.  We made a total of 178 blocks this month, so we'll have 4 winners: two will receive 45 blocks and the other two will receive 44 blocks.  Good luck to everyone in the drawing.

If you made blocks this month, you should receive email today from WordPress with the username and (computer generated) password for your new author account.  The first thing you'll want to do is set up your profile and change your password.  I've tried to walk you through the process here:

First Things First - Setting up Your Account

2 Hour Warning

The deadline for the drawing is in two hours, which will be Noon in NYC, 9 AM in Los Angeles, 3 PM in Portugal, 2 AM (Tomorrow) in Sydney, Australia,

6 for Deana

The internet has been down so I had to run somewhere else this morn.  I love these blocks!

2 eclipse entries

The purple is a little brighter than the picture shows, so I hope this is okay. The curved technique came in handy on another project where there are dresden plate 1/4s being set in corner blocks, and the pattern didn't narrow them down enough at the corner so they need a little quarter circle. A bit tighter to sew in close quarters but it worked.
I'm blessed with a Pfaff quilt expressions 4.0, so the needle down option really helps to feed the fabric around the curves. I think it would have been more of a struggle on my old Kenmore.

Two Eclipse for Kristin

Made time today to sew up the second eclipse I've had cut out all month.  Adding that to the first one, and I've got a whopping two for the month.

Please donate my chances this month!

I've decided to make myself a Lotto Sampler using a layer cake I've been hoarding.  Should be fun!

My January blocks...

Laura Randolph
ljrandolph

eclipse

Here are 3 more blocks for January.
Gwen

eclipse

Copied and made my templates as soon as Sophie posted the information and then did nothing else until yesterday. With previous New York Beauty quilting experience, I was able to put together 12 blocks last evening. 9 for the lotto and 3 for my lotto scrap quilt , thanks again to Sophie and her great idea to keep all blocks the same size this year.
Really enjoyed making these and here they are.The other 3 are similar to the 2 greens and another mottled red.
Gwen

Eclipses for January

I only made two this time. I am one of the few who doesn't cheer for this block.

eclipse

Hello,

These are my nine blocks for the eclipse swap.  Since I won the last swap I would like to donate the nine for this month. 

Happy Sewing, Debra

Last year's string hearts

While I did not win last year, I did at least have my 2 bonus hearts... they sat and sat, until this year, when I decided to make two more string hearts and their bonus hearts. Then, I laid them out, played with scrap pieces of black, and came up with this!
Which then sat on my ironing board for another 2 weeks until I finally quilted it last night- nothing fancy, just in the ditch around the hearts (well, mostly- I had taken my contacts out!). It now hangs in our kitchen. I have small wallhangings for almost the whole year now!

Transition Update and a Photo Challenge

Unfortunately, during the last week or so, while I wasn't on top of the Block Lotto Blog, I ALSO wasn't working on our new site ...

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm still fighting with the template and the Home page format.  I'm currently impatiently waiting for "support."   I'd like to pull it together in the next few days, but I don't think it's going to happen.  There has been a lot of "one step forward, two steps back;" I'm sure there will be more of the same; and, at the moment, I'm stuck ;-)

One of the view things that is sort-of working is a photo-slider feature on the home page, in which I'd like to feature photos of the quilts and other projects made from lotto blocks OR inspired by lotto blocks.  At the moment it's having problems auto-magically resizing the images on posts imported from here.  So, I was thinking that some of you might be interested in creating "beauty shots" of your beautiful quilts in the preferred dimensions:

960 pixels wide x 368 pixels tall

I know that a lot of our quilts have been gifted or donated.  If that's the case, another option could be to crop one of your existing photos (or create a collage of photos) which is approximately 2 1/2 times as wide as it is tall.  Otherwise, after I manually tweak your posts with photos so that they WILL be cropped/ re-sized automatically, we'll have no artistic input into HOW they will be changed to fit.

If you have the time and inclination to re-photograph a quilt or crop/collage exisitng photos to create something with the ideal proportions for the "slider," you can email them to me and I'll glue it all together ;-)

UPDATE

I cropped a couple photos to see if that slider would work as expected. (Andrew, I hope it's OK with you that I took some liberties with yours).

They are both close to the 1: 2.5 ratio.  They look the same size here. but the detail photo of Andrew's quilt is actually much smaller than the ideal size of 960 pixels wide x 368 pixels tall. The other photo is slightly larger.   If you click over to our future home page, and wait for them to "slide" by, you can see what happens.  I also created a "beauty crop" of a detail of Julie's wonderful quilt made from the combination of string hearts and violet blocks and a couple of other recent "show and tell" posts.

IF you follow the home page link and go check out the current sad state of the construction project going on in our new home, PLEASE DO NOT attempt to post or add comments . .   YET.