Tag Archives: books

Thank you!

This is just a quick post to thank everyone who left messages on my last two posts about my preserved vintage embroidery quilts. I’m sorry I didn’t answer each comment individually but I want you to know how much I appreciate all your kind words!

I love hearing from everyone and I know you aren’t all quilters, but I’d love to see pictures of your quilts or any other craft you are involved with. Just send pictures to my website – quiltingcozy@gmail.com. 

I got the second quilt back from Judy, the quilter, and she did a great job as usual.

We chose a very open meander so that the quilting wouldn’t interfere with the design.

One reader asked about the quilt my little Casey Jones is sitting on at the end of one of the posts. That is a simple braid and I’ll include that when I do my donated baby quilt post. (Yes, he has his own baby quilt).

Casey is a 7-year-old Imperial Shih Tzu (Imperial refers to a size between a toy and a standard – He’s 10 pounds of love and cuddles).

I hope every one is having a great beginning of 2024. It’s winter for some of us and summer for you lucky folks in Australia. West Virginia has been very fortunate so far with very mild weather including a few spring-like days!

Please continue to leave comments or write to me at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com, and I will try to respond to blog comments individually next time!

My very best wishes to all my blog friends and readers,

Carol

CONGRATULATIONS, OLIVIA…

This fall, Olivia (one of our blog followers, a Quilting Cozy reader, and a quilt retreat friend of mine) contacted me with some exciting news and she gave me permission to share that news with you!

Remember the quilt featured in this book?

Well, Olivia decided to follow the instructions in the back of the book for making the quilt. She worked on it at our Spring Retreat here in West Virginia and it was fun to watch. I regret that I didn’t take a picture of Olivia surrounded by her neat piles of blocks and her energetic smile. She was clearly having fun. We all checked in with her periodically to see her progress.

This was our first picture of her completed quilt:

This quilt was a reproduction of one of the civil war quilts that was the focus of Book 12: Frayed Edges: A quilting cozy. A beautiful quilt and excellent workmanship! Olivia is a very skilled quilter.

And that’s not just my opinion!

Olivia won 2nd PLACE in the ‘machine pieced and machine quilted‘ category at the Washington County Fair in Pennsylvania! (see her excitement??)

And that’s not all! Olivia also won FIRST PLACE at the smaller local fair in Jacktown PA!

We are all proud of you, Olivia! And I want to thank you for taking the time to make a quilt featured in my Quilting Cozy series. For all you quilters, there is a pattern at the end of each of the 12 books in the series, as well as a mystery, lots of quilting, and the many adventures of our friends living in the Cunningham Village retirement community which exists only in this series (despite the many emails I get from readers wanting to know where the community is so they can move there!)

If anyone has made any of the quilts from my series, I would love to see pictures and with your permission I will feature them on my blog. Send them to me along with a note to QuiltingCozy@gmail.com.

My very best wishes to all my friends and CONGRATULATIONS to Olivia!

Carol

WE HAVE OUR 5 WINNERS!

Five lucky winners were chosen using the Random Number Generator offered by Random.com. All five winners have been notified by email and will be sending me their addresses so I can mail signed copies of the first two books in the Quilting Cozy series, Tie Died and Running Stitches:

If you weren’t chosen this time, there’s hope. I do these giveaways often.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginnings of summer. Here in ‘Wild and Wonderful’ West Virginia (where I retired to the eastern panhandle), its been a rainy beginning, but the plants are loving it.

Best wishes to all,

Carol

Frayed Edges: A Quilting Cozy by Carol Dean Jones

In this twelfth installment of a Quilting Cozy series, excitement grows as the Tuesday Night Quilters plan an antique quilt show. But things go terribly wrong. Sarah and Sophie again throw themselves into the middle of the investigation, but this time Sarah finds herself in real danger. As always, Sarah and her retirement village cohorts offer fun, mystery, and lots of quilting.

This is the final book in the Quilting Cozy series by Carol Dean Jones. It has been a fun series to write, and I’ve been told it is fun to read. As a cozy, it offers a light mystery but with no visible violence or objectionable language. The focus is on the relationships among the characters who are residents of an active retirement community. The characters are in their seventies and eighties, a real treat for those of us who sometimes feel left out of the fictional character world.

For the quilters, this series includes the pattern for the quilt on the cover of each book. In most books, the characters are also making the quilt as part of the storyline.

This past spring, I attended a local quilt retreat and was surprised to see that the quilter at the next table was piecing something very familiar. It turned out she was making the cover quilt from Frayed Edges! I regret that I didn’t take pictures of all the pieces as she cut and organized them, but I did receive a picture of the finished quilt (below).

This quilt looks very complicated, but once you catch on to the pattern, it’s primarily a matter of correctly arranging two blocks: a four-patch and a solid block with two snowball corners. The challenge is in the placement!

The quilter sent me a picture of her finished quilt top, which is awaiting quilting, and I wanted to share it with you.

My quilting friend did a beautiful job of making this quilt. I love her choice of fabrics, color arrangement, and her attention to detail. This will be a family heirloom one day! It also gives me great pleasure to see my quilt being made by one of my readers.

One of my quilting friends made the Rescue Quilt wall hanging and displays the Rescue Quilt book on a table by the wallhanging. She gets many comments!

I wonder how many others have followed the patterns in the back of each book in the series? I would love to hear from you (QuiltingCozy@gmail.com) and send pictures if possible. I’ll do a blog featuring all of them!

Here are a few examples of cover quilts, and each includes the patterns at the end of the book.

And to encourage others to consider making this quilt, I am offering a free signed copy of Frayed Edges, a Quilting Cozy, to five followers of the blog who leave a comment below. Names will be randomly chosen using the Random Number Generator, and the drawing will be in two weeks: Friday, September 23rd. If you received this blog automatically, you are already a follower, but if you saw it on Facebook or other social media, be sure to sign up as a follower, as only followers are eligible for the drawing.

My very best wishes to all my readers and followers. I hope you had a terrific (and healthy) summer.

Carol

A Quilting Cozy Series – Now Available on Kindle Unlimited

The first eleven books of this series are now available on Kindle Unlimited which means if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited on Amazon, you will get the ebooks at no cost beyond the membership fee! This has not yet been extended to the last book in the series (Frayed Edges, A Quilting Cozy, Book 12) but the publisher is working on that.

Also, Amazon is erroneously listing the first eleven books as part of an “11-book series” and this is not correct. There are 12 books in the series and Book #12, Frayed Edges, is on Amazon just not included in the count. I have heard from many readers saying they have just read Book 11 and they hope I’m writing more so I’m hoping to reach those people so they will know there is a Book 12, Frayed Edges.

Okay, with that out of the way – It’s finally springtime at least here in the United States. I’m in West Virginia and the leaves are beginning to come out and my Red Bud is in full bloom. The blossoms took a beating in a surprise snowstorm a couple of days ago. Red Buds are very common in West Virginia and can be seen in the early spring along every winding country road. Story goes that early settlers used the presence of Red Buds as an indication that the area had excellent soil.

And it’s time to begin spring cleanup in the yard and the house. I’m planning to do Spring House Cleaning next week. Yes, I know that’s out of date, but I’m in my 80s and we older (and more traditional) folks still do things like that. I believe, at least in my family, it was necessary during the thirties and forties because of the coal-burning furnaces. Spring was spent clearing away the soot that had accumulated in hidden corners and particular on the wallpaper (yes, wallpaper! remember, I’m old). My grandmother and I would clean the walls with this rubbery stuff which was like silly putty. I was responsible for the bottom two feet! (I was young then!).

I have been making baby quilts for an outreach program in our county. It’s called YoungLives and is directed toward pregnant teenagers and young mothers. One focus is for trained mentors to encourage and help them stay in school and also to provide training in parenting skills and help these ‘children’ transition into parenthood. So far, I’ve made a couple dozen baby quilts and will include more pictures in my next blog.

I want to welcome all our new followers! Pat Sloan has very kindly shared my books with her followers and I have heard from many of you that they are enjoying the series. Thank you, Pat! And welcome newcomers.

I also want to encourage my new followers (and everyone else) to continue leaving a message under ‘Comments’ below or writing to me at QuiltingCozy@gmail.com. I’d love to see pictures of your quilts or other crafts, or simply hear what you’ve been doing. I hope the addition of my series to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited makes it possible for more people to read the books.

My very best wishes to everyone,

Carol Dean

Frayed Edges: A Quilting Cozy (Book 12)

The 12th book in the Quilting Cozy series will be released in a couple of weeks (June 25th) and is available for pre-order on C&T-Publishing’s-website, and on Amazon in print and eBook format. It will also be available at books stores and quilt shops around the country.

Because it is being released this month, C&T asked me to provide a narrative for their June blog. I thought, as followers of my blog, you might like to read it. It will tell you about the new book and, if you are new to the series, it will give you an overview of my Quilting Cozy mystery series. (See link below.)

Stay tuned for information about the 2-book give-away (with 5 winners!) which will appear in my blog the same day the new book is released: June 25, 2021.

My very best wishes to all my followers.

Carol

Click here to read the blog I wrote for C&T’s June newsletter

AND THE FUN CONTINUES FOR SARAH AND SOPHIE…

The Rescue Quilt.jpgAnother book, The Rescue Quilt, Book #7 in The Quilting Cozy series by Carol Dean Jones will be released by C&T Publishing on December 5th.  The Rescue Quilt, currently available for pre-order, will be available at C&T Publishing, on Amazon (print and Kindle format), and in bookstores and fabric shops nationwide. This second edition includes (more…)

Cover Quilts – Tie Died

One of the first decisions I made regarding the first book in my quilting cozy series was to design a quilt for the cover and have my characters create the same quilt in the story.

Sarah, a widow and the main character of my book, having recently moved to a retirement village, decided she wanted to learn to quilt in order to preserve her husband’s ties. No problem for the story quilt, but what about the cover? I didn’t own any ties.

16452_frontcover_low (2)Okay, so I started with the family, and they agreed to share what they could. Then I hit the consignment shops and Goodwill. (I was surprised at the prices for used ties. New ties must have increased dramatically in price since I last bought new ones some twenty-five years ago!)

While shopping at Goodwill, I was noticing the many food stains on the ties and muttered to myself, “Are men using these things as bibs?” A male shopper nearby frowned and walked away. I guess he felt personally insulted. My mistake.

I ultimately collected enough ties to make my first cover quilt.

When one of my relatives, a retired policeman, saw the quilt he exclaimed, “My Department Ties! How did they get in your quilt?” I guess he wasn’t consulted. To make up for it, he is now the proud owner of that quilt. (He got his ties back!)

I had no idea that TIE DIED would be the beginning of a series, but within a few months of finishing it and getting it up on Amazon (I was self-publishing at that point), I found Sarah and Sophie nudging me to write one more – and then another. We now have ten books and ten cover quilts.

Will they keep nudging?

NOTE: The series is now being published by C&T Publishing and are due for re-release (Second Edition) on September 5, 2018 beginning with Tie Died. The new edition will include the pattern for the cover quilt in each book.