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Ami's AfterChat Newsletter

February 1997


Please Note: This newsletter was originally sent on February 21, 1997. It may not have improved with age. Information may be outdated and irrelevant, not to mention useless. It is here only for your enjoyment.
GREAT NEWS
TinyStich has volunteered her husband's laptop (hopefully with his consent) so that I can do our chat from the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Williamsburg on Thursday February 27. Hopefully AOL will let us on, and we'll see you there! Please join us if you can from 9-10 pm EST in the Quilter's Chat room. The first 45 minutes are with protocol and the last bit is "free-for-all." Don't worry about the protocol. Just type "?" when you'd like to ask a quilty question and wait before you send it until I call on you. Hope to see you at there, either in real life or "virtually."


CONGRATULATIONS
Clap, clap, clap. Congratulations to CalicoBlue for winning the impromptu whining contest during last months chat. QuiltHolly was kind enough to donate a beautiful calendar featuring the Olympic Quilts. Since I got a little tired of the trivia contests we've been having, I decided she (or he) who wrote the best whining letter about why they deserved the calendar would win it. Spectacular whining, Calico. You go girl!


THE ULTIMATE PILLOWCASE CHALLENGE What a huge success! I am overwhelmed at your generosity. I delivered the pillows (with cases) to the YWCA along with your cash contributions ($147) and met with the director of Safe House. She was overjoyed. The Flint Journal was there for the "hand-off" and they might even run a picture in the paper. A total of 64 pillows were delivered to the facility and as we talked no less than five people walked over and asked if the pillows were for sale! (See how good you all done!) The better news is that all the pillows I had on hand are now out of my basement. The best news is that I have to go out and purchase 102 more pillows to fill the pillowcases! I am delighted to do so; this is such a good cause. Not only does Safe House offer shelter to battered women and their children, but if offers counseling for the victims as well as the assailants. This last part is often mandated by the courts and helps break the chain of violence.


AND THE WINNERS ARE.....
Our big winners in the Lands' End attaché case drawings were Wendyqlts (cash donation) and Lingrinade (pillowcases). The big winners are the kids who will get the pillows. They will each receive a Lands' End attaché case to go along with that warm fuzzy feeling of having done a very good deed. The five top money donators and the five top pillowcase makers will also receive quilter's address books from Lands' End. They are:

Cash DonationsPillowcases
#1:nzinniSandraDea
#2:wendyqltsNak712
#3:BeebeMossjvillam m
#4:SamQuilterlingrinade
#5:A. Conchelosdawn

A special thank-you to SandraDea who whipped out 32 pillowcases - all with kid and seasonal novelty prints. Great idea!


PHOTO-TRANSFER QUILTS ON TV
I'm going to be a re-run! Home & Garden Television (HGTV) is going to be re- running the "Simply Quits" segment I did on Tuesday, February 25 and again on March 3. Check your local cable listings and tune in to see how to make photo- transfer quilts. If you need to order Photos-To-Fabric transfer paper (the stuff I used on the show) either check out my web page http://quilt.com/amisimms or email me and I can send you the details.


THE WORST QUILT IN THE WORLD CONTEST Happily, over 21,000 people have seen the Grand Prize Winning Quilt from last year's contest and lived to tell about it. Sadly, hardly any of those people are entering this year's contest! Let me at this time invite you to ENTER. Over $8,000 in prizes. Odds are pretty good, if you catch my drift...... The best way is to check out the web site at: http://quilt.com/worstquilt. The next best way is to send a long SASE to: Worst Quilt Contest/4206 Sheraton Dr./Flint, MI 48532.


GRAND PRIZE WINNER REVEALING (uhm, REVEALED?)
There is a link on the worst quilt page to Kathy Larrieu's home page. She's the gal that won the Grand Prize for her quilt, Penrose Folly. Be sure to click MEET THE WINNER or go directly to http://www.vanderbilt.edu/%7Etheo/quilt/ for a look at the Grand Prize Winner in a rather unusual pose.

Here's the scoop. As you know (if you had an entry form and were about to enter, hint, hint) it says that the Grand Prize Winner will be photographed with a paper sack over her head to protect her anonymity. If the winner lives farther than 50 miles from Flint, MI (which is incidentally where I live) then an employee of Mallery Press will stand in. So far, we're two for two. Both the 1995 and the 1996 winner lived farther away than 50 miles so we rounded up the employees and stuck paper bags over their heads to see who looked most like the winner. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but there are only two employees here at Mallery Press. One is me and the other is the lovely Teresa. One is "bagged" and the other works the camera. It's a team effort, out there on the driveway in front of passing cars, letter carriers, and the occasional gardener.

This last year we tried the usual variety of grocery sacks. Finding them sans advertising is no easy trick, BTW. We each took turns in the bag. Then we got silly. (Sillier?) Teresa got her hands on one of those huge leaf bags which came down practically to her knees. (Teresa is vertically challenged.) She was wearing shorts and it looked like she had on absolutely nothing except the bag. We laughed a lot. Actually, I laughed more than she did as the cars going by the house slowed to a mere crawl, and people started hanging out the windows. She couldn't see herself, which was probably the only reason she agreed to stay in the bag. Besides, once she was in there she needed my help to get out. Those things are sturdy -- and I was laughing way too hard to help her.

Then it was my turn. Going for the same look, I ran into the garage and whipped of my jeans and then got into the bag. One thing led to another and out came the black stockings and high heels, which we thought would add some class to the pictures. We shot off a whole roll of film, never intending to actually use them. We were, after all trying to pretend to be Kathy, the poor winner, who deserved some respect. I sent Kathy the pictures. Guess what's on her web page? After you stop laughing, click on the INTERVIEW.


AN URGENT PLEA FOR HELP
Please help retrieve two stolen quilts taken from the Dallas North Park Mall office. Go to this website http://rampages.onramp.net/~cc/alz_quilt.html for the full story and photographs of the missing quilts. Print a copy for three of your friends, your guild newsletter, your next guild meeting, and your local quilt shop. Possibly if we work together we can help find the quilts.


QUILT STAMP
Isn't it about time we had a quilting postage stamp? I think there was one a while back---4 basket blocks or something? AQS is spearheading a write-in campaign for a new quilting stamp. You can write to them at AQS PO Box 3290/Paducah, KY 42002-3290 to add your support, or...

Why not hit up the post office directly? Here's their email address:
customer@email.usps.gov
Don't know what to say? Put "I'd like to see a quilting stamp!" in the subject and feel free to copy this message:

Please forward this message to:
Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Management
U.S. Postal Service
475 L'Enfant Plaza, SW
Room 4474EB
Washington, DC 20260-6756.

Please consider creating a commemorative quilting stamp celebrating one of America's original artforms---the American quilt.

Thank you,
YOUR NAME & ADDRESS

Don't forget to use your real name (not just your screen name) and your address. Let's pass the word. I'd like to see them get a kazillion emails. Let's let them know we're out there!


SHOE LACE DILEMMA SOLVED
Thanks to everyone who suggested various methods of keeping my slippery shoe laces tied. I tried all but the little toddler clamps a few of you suggested. So far, the best method came from imaquilter who wrote: "tie your laces the regular way: make a loop, wrap the other lace around it, and start to scoot that other lace through the hole you have made by wrapping it around. Take that loop you've just made and instead of pulling it right through, pull it through, hang on to it, and pass it through the hole a second time. Then pull it tight as you always do, and go on your way. You can untie this bow just as you usually would, by pulling on one lace. But you'll find it stays tied until you choose to untie it." Hallelujah! It works!


WEBSITE OF THE MONTH
Totally non-quilty, but delicious. You can get FREE jelly beans (if you're one of the first 500 of the day to request them---they stagger the times throughout the day so you may have to check a couple of times) at http://www.jellybelly.com. Just follow the prompts. And beware, they can tell if you try and request more than one freebie. (Don't ask me how I know.) I also found a website for free beef jerky, but who wants THAT!? (Now I'm gonna catch it from the beef jerky contingent!)


THANKS TO THE QUILTERS IN NEWARK, OHIO
Many thanks for the warm welcome I received from the Heart of Ohio Quilt Guild in the greater Newark, Ohio Metropolitan Area. It was a blast teaching for you and I hope to see some of those string quilts some time soon. Please send photographs. Also, not all of you saw, but the guild gave me a lovely plaque depicting the Granville Inn where I stayed. (I could even find MY room!) It's on the window sill here in the office, right above the sewing machine. The guild tote bag is our "auxiliary mail bag" and is getting frequent use these days. Thank you!


AS ALWAYS
This is a "by request" only newsletter. If you'd ever like to be removed from the list, just email me and ask me to take you off. (I'll feel really bad, but I'll get over it.) You can forward the newsletter to anyone you like or keep it all for yourself. If your friends would like to receive their own copy, all they have to do is email me and ask.

Please let me know if you change service providers or change your screen name. I maintain this list (of over 500!) manually. I sit here like an idiot every time I send it out waiting for all your names to click by. I have to stop everything when a bad name comes through and fix it before I can continue....... so let me know if you change your name or privider.

Happy quiltling, and I hope to see you all online,
Ami Simms
amisimms@aol.com


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