Happy Friday, Quilters! Today is our stop on the Modern Bee Blog Tour! Lindsay Conner, author of Modern Bee-13 Quilts to Make with Friends, is here to tell you a bit more about the brand new book from Stash Books and offer a little giveaway! Keep reading and enter the giveaway below!
Hello Fat Quarter Shop friends! I'm Lindsay Conner, and I'm thrilled today to be at The Jolly Jabber with some behind-the-scenes info about my first quilting book, Modern Bee—13 Quilts to Make with Friends. There's also a giveaway at the end of this post!
First up, a little bit about this book! I worked with a team of very talented quilters, who were a part of my online quilting bee, Mod Stitches. In early 2012, we began the bee as normal, each taking a month to design a block, mail fabric to other members of the bee, and collect those blocks to make a finished quilt. It wasn't long (early March) until I got to share the big news with my friends that Stash Books had accepted our book proposal!
To meet the deadlines of the book, we kicked the bee into
hyper speed,
mailing fabric and blocks as soon as we could over a period of about
four months. From April through July, we each kept a pace of finishing
about one block each week for another quilter in the bee. After everyone
had received their finished quilt blocks, it was time to assemble the
quilts. All 12 members of the bee pieced together their quilts blocks
and finished their quilts over a period of about 4 weeks to keep pace with the deadlines.
As the compiler of the book, it was my role to communicate the
schedule and make sure everyone stayed on top of their deadlines. This
was sometimes easy, and sometimes quite stressful, but we made it
through! The real fun was in seeing the blocks and finished quilt tops
pop up in our secret Flickr group.
By the end of August, I'd received finished quilts in the mail from each
of the ladies in the bee. My next big job was to collect the quilts and
ship them off to Stash Books headquarters in California for the photo
shoot. You can imagine how nerve-wracking it was to mail off
irreplaceable quilts, hoping they would arrive at their destination in
one piece! Thankfully, my superb wrapping skills (cardboard, plastic wrap and duct
tape) came in handy, and we had no casualties! I also mailed in several props and step-by-step fabric samples for each of the blocks.
The team at Stash Books was a dream to work with. From the initial proposal to working with my development editor, production editor and technical editors, I was confident that we were headed in the right direction with the content. My book designer contacted me early in the process to discuss the look and feel I envisioned for the book, and we tossed around words like clean, retro and minimal to help guide the photo shoots and overall design. I also got to tell her about stores I like to shop at, catalogs I like and some of my favorite photography in general. See... they really thought about everything!
Would you believe me if I told you that I wouldn't change a thing about this book? As soon as I previewed the designed pages and saw these gorgeous photos, I was over-the-moon excited! And then began the long wait to today, when I finally get to share these gorgeous quilts.
I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on the making of the book Modern Bee—13 Quilts to Make with Friends. For more previews, giveaways and fun extras from the book, be sure to follow the tour!
Modern Bee Blog Tour
Monday, 10/7: Sew Mama Sew + Stash Books
Tuesday, 10/8: SewCraftyJess + Sew Sweetness
Wednesday, 10/9: Ellison Lane + Diary of a Quilter
Thursday, 10/11: Katie's Korner + Pat Sloan
Friday, 10/12: Fat Quarter Shop (you are here) + imagine gnats
Saturday, 10/12: Quilting is My Therapy + Hot Pink Stitches
Monday, 10/14: Live a Colorful Life + Craft Gossip
Tuesday, 10/15: SewCanShe + Maureen Cracknell Handmade
Wednesday, 10/16: Craftsy + Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores
Giveaway!
Want to win a copy of Modern Bee? To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post telling us about your quilting bee, what you're currently sewing, or something you learned about the book!
We'll choose one random winner to receive a hard copy of the book! If winner
lives outside the U.S., they'll receive a copy of the e-book. Giveaway
ends October, 16, 2013. Good luck!
UPDATE! Holly Fitzpatrick is our lucky winner! Thank you to everyone for playing!Labels: Blog Tour, Book Tour, Guest Quilting Writers, Quilt Book