The Proof has arrived! Sassaman Giveaway!

 

After all the hours of reading the manuscript last week and correcting all the diagrams, we sent the CDs off to the printer. The first thing they do is print the CDs and then send you back a mock up of the book and we have to proof it all again for hours! This time besides looking for grammar and typos, we need to check the graphics. It was pretty clean but still we were missing some images and had to lighten others etc.  By now, we are a little tired of reading this for the tenth time but it is a critical step and our last chance to make sure there are little to NO mistakes.  I’m more worried about making the instructions clear for the reader and not so much about misspellings and commas missing.

What do you think of the interior? After reading it this time, I feel that it is truly a beautiful book reflecting Jane’s art and love of color…in my humble opinion.

PART TWO- NORIKO ENDO NEW QUILT

If you read this blog during Xmas, I bought one of her cherry blossom quilts for my living room. Well, it is now on tour at Quilt Festival in Cincinnati and will follow to Long Beach and Houston and it won’t return until Thanksgiving!  So to cover the bare space over my fireplace, Noriko ‘whipped up’ this new quilt for me in a few weeks!  She is very prolific! 

This quilt used the cherry blossom die from Accuquilt so it was much faster than cutting out all these blossoms by hand!  The die will be available in the next month from them so be on the lookout! Paired with Noriko’s book, Confetti Naturescapes and you could make one of these quilts also!

GIVEAWAY!!!!!

Leave a comment below about what you like to see in books, what kind of quilting books you want or something you’d like to tell a publisher. We’ll pick 1 person at random April 9 to win the wonderful purse pattern featured on Jane’s blog this week.

And come back for weekly giveaways up to the launch of PATCHWORK SASSAMAN STYLE!

Patchwork Sassaman Style at the Printer

Hooray!  We finally got the book finished and sent it all to the printer overseas!

Thought you’d like to see the front cover that we chose and the gorgeous back cover!  I liked the colors of the back cover better but I was out voted! Anyway, I think they turned out well.

 

Next step is that I get the color proof and check it again! This manuscript was read at least 8 times by assorted editors, author and myself and still we found many corrections at the last minute!  You can never read it enough! I’m sure that there will still be errors after it goes to press and that bothers me! At least I hope that they aren’t major ones where the reader won’t understand the technique!  I don’t care so much about misspellings or commas at this point.

After the proof is approved, then the book goes to press and it will take about 4 weeks to print all the copies.  I will get some books flown in so that Jane can do a few book signings at the Spring Quilt Market (so if you attend, look for those) and so I can start marketing the book.  The first copies go to the buyers and the magazine reviewers etc.

The pallets of books go by boat and then by train or truck to Ohio and then to my warehouse and that could take from 6-8 weeks!  As soon as it is on the water, I’ll open up pre-sales so you can be among the first to receive your copy!  The best way to know is to sign up for the email newsletters at Dragon Threads or to watch this blog.

Every week I’ll try to put up new pages from the book to give you a peek and will have plenty of giveaways!  Then we will have a blog tour this summer with even more giveaways!

Would love to hear your comments about the covers, book, process and what you’d like to see/know more about.

Cover Design

Sometimes it is easy to design a cover, but not for this book!

When we did Noriko Endo’s book, there was only one quilt where we could get a large, high res shot for a cover bleed so that was no worry! 

But here we have so many quilt photos to choose from which makes it more difficult. What should the cover convey? How can the design grab the reader?

The book is NOT patterns using Jane’s fabrics but is more involved. It shows how to use large scale personality prints in a collection to create dramatic quilts with little piecing.  We do use Jane’s fabric solely in the book but explain how to create these same graphic looks using any other fabric collections….so is it necessary to show this on the cover or save that for the back cover? Should the cover just be so beautiful that the quilter picks up the book to read the back cover and learn what is inside the book?  But what if the book is in a catalog where the quilter can only see the front cover?

Of course you know that every book IS judged by the cover! It’s one of the most important parts of the book creation.  Our aim is to sell books after all. So as you can see, it is a complex decision.

As promised, here are some cover ideas. Please vote for your favorite one in the comments using # 1-6…THANKS!!