Wow, today was full of great surprises from start to finish.  Amy Ellis posted that we were ready to start the next block for her quilt sampler.  This month is for large 18″ Greek cross blocks.  I spent most of my  lunch hour picking out fabric and finished one block before I had to get back to work.  I’ll show those tomorrow when I get them all done.  It’s an AccuQuilt friendly block using the 12″ Qube.

UPS sent me an email last week to expect a package today from Handi Quilter.  I just thought it was going to be addressed to my husband and was a Christmas present since the UPS notifications are based on our address and not specifically my name.  Here came the UPS truck and it was my name on the address label.  That suddenly got interesting – I didn’t order anything from them.

I called my husband; no, he hadn’t ordered anything for me.  Was it from the dealer maybe?  I finally decided to call Handi Quilter directly to get the mystery figured out.  It seems when they had the demo days sale back in October, it came with a starter package.  That’s probably a way to say thanks for buying a slightly used machine except in my case I received a new one.  So now I have a brand new machine – and I received a huge box of really cool freebies to go with it!  I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a box since I got all that fabric and thread from Mary Fons.

There were 3 huge Ziploc bags in the box.  The first one had a ruler base for the Avante.  Yep, I had just bought that last week when it was on sale but the store had already told me I could return it with my receipt so I was good to go.  And for good measure, the second bag had the echo feet in it that are seemingly always on back order that I had snagged last week. Those will be going back also since I hadn’t opened them up yet.

It also included a glide foot which I didn’t even know what that was until this afternoon.  It’s a foot designed specifically to go over thick or uneven surfaces – think applique as an example.  Cool!  They also recommend it for quilts made with flannel, minky, etc. I could’ve used that on the Libs Elliott quilt. And that bag also included a case to hold a lot of bobbins.  It was the third bag that was chock full of stuff.

The next bag included two rulers – one is the Versa Tool which  has 4 sides to it; straight, round, right angles and a curved side.  That ruler alone retails for $25.  The second ruler was a straight end ruler that’s a nice long length with markings on it which I know I’ll be using a lot.  They also included the sandpaper dots or something along those lines to help them grip to the fabric.  They also threw in 2 boxes of needles, bobbins, straight pins to use for pinning fabric to the leaders, 3 how-to DVDs.  And my favorite of all – a light strip to illuminate the entire quilting area!  Nice!!!

The day wasn’t done.  Our son came home with an A on his final exam in math – yay! And then I had a return email from Laurie Hird.  If you aren’t familiar with the name, she’s the author of the Farmer’s Wife quilt books.  She just published a book called the Bible Sampler Quilt.  I was definitely interested but wasn’t sure how to get a copy of the paper pieced templates since my notebook doesn’t have an optical drive in it. She put me in touch with the publisher who said that they had PDF versions available.  Yay!  So I’ll be posting about the 96 blocks as I finish them.  I love the colors she’s used here; I’m thinking I may go with bright fabrics on mine since right now I have a lot of that fabric on hand. You can read more about it as well as find links on ordering it at http://thefarmerswifequilt.blogspot.com/2016/09/preview-of-bible-sampler-quilt.html .