Dear readers,

I want to share with you a gift I recently received in the mail, the gift took 4 months to get here and is so very much appreciated.

Before I tell you what it is I have to go back a bit in the story. About a month ago I received a cryptic email from Nicole (Perth) of Craftapalooza, asking if I had received a package from Weeks (USA) of fun quilts. I hadn’t, but my curiosity was piqued. And I became suspicious that there were goings on that I did not know about. Weeks contacted me worried that a package that she had sent via sea seemed to be taking rather a long time, and she was especially worried because she had lost the job ticket, and had no way to trace it. There was nothing to do except wait and hope that it would turn up eventually.

Fast forward a few weeks and a box arrived for me. I had by now realised it was a quilt. Weeks had sent me a picture of the quilt that she was convinced had been stolen along the way. But when it arrived I was still taken by surprise. Pictures never seem to do these things justice. I am so incredibly in awe of the behind the scenes scheming and planning, time and effort and skill that went into making this quilt. The contributers of whipup sent fabric to Weeks who then made the beautiful eclectic mix into a happy beautiful quilt. I will let Weeks explain the process of making and organising it, but I know how much time and energy she put into this. Thank you Weeks for your appreciation of whipup and being a part of it. Thank you for taking the time to organise and do this for me. I love the quilt just so much and am so happy that it survived its long voyage to Australia.

In fact the quilt had perfect timing. Even though to readers whipup has only been going 9-10 months, for me this is a one year anniversary. It was a year ago that I began seriously discussing the idea of whipup with my husband. Thinking about what sort of format it would take, planning the time to get it up and running, contacting possible contributers and tossing around ideas for what sort of site it would be. We then set up whipup during our Christmas holidays last year and launched it in January. Since then the group of contributers has changed a bit, with a small core group staying the same, and new rich voices adding vibrancy along the way. Whipup continues to grow in an organic way, as I have time and ideas to make things happen, as contributers change and as the readership grows. As whipup heads towards one year of ‘air’ time. Thank you to everyone involved.

This is the card that came with the quilt, you can see the people who sent fabric and the fabric patch they sent, I love knowing who donated which fabric, matching personalites to fabric is certainly interesting.

And this is the quilt. It is a single bed size, but I am using it on the couch as a throw/wrap. The colours all just seem to work so well together, and there is an original Camilla fabric print on the back which is just gorgeous. Unfortunately I don’t have a better photo to show you (camera dead), I would love for you to see the gorgeous details in each unique fabric, and the fabulous quilting pattern that weeks has used.

While I am on the track of thanking everyone, I want to thank the wonderful contributers of whipup, I am sure I do not thank them enough. Do you guys realise how grateful I am that you take time out of your schedule, time away from crafting, away from your own blogs and your families to write and research interesting items for whipup? Thank you to all the contributers, past and present who have written one post or many. Thank you for believing in this project and helping it come to fruition. I can’t wait to see what the new year brings for whipup.

Thank you to the readers of whipup, for checking in every day or so, for leaving comments and sending in your ideas and links and questions. Thank you for entering the whiplash competitions and for supporting each others entries as well. That is what is so wonderful about this craft blog community, it is the support that is given, while critiques are an important part of the learning process, support and praise is what makes making stuff worth while. So thank you all for that.

Also thank you for the financial support of whipup, those of you who have donated $5 along the way, it all helps. And for the donations of prizes and sponsorship for whiplash. Giving away those fab prizes each month is so much fun, and I know that those who receive them really appreciate them too. We will be continuing with whiplash comps in the New Year so watch out for a new season of themes. Ideas are of course welcome so please email them in.

There are a few other exciting things happening for whipup in the New Year, I am really hoping to get a long awaited forum going. To discuss general issues and share ideas, so look out for that in 2007. I am not sure if you have noticed the occasional rogue contributer, someone who writes a post or two and then dissapears. These are occasional contributers, and I am hoping that more people will want to become involved. Email me if you are interested - check out the contributers link in the side bar for more info. I am always on the look out on how to make whipup bigger and better so if you have any ideas then send them in.

No thank you would be complete without thanking my very supportive tech team (my husband Rob) who slaves away in the background fixing technical hiccups, updating software, adding new plugins and generally making the site run smoothly. Thats love for you. He’s a good sort.

Happy Holidays and good luck with celebration organisation and activities.
Hope to bring you lots of inspiration and fun leading up to the New Year.
Cheers
Kathreen

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 3:23 am and is filed under WU admin, whiplash. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.