#AtoZChallenge The Great and Powerful Theme Reveal

This is my 3rd year of participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge and its the first time I have managed to almost get the theme reveal out there on the right day. I never seem to be able to keep up with when it is supposed to be.

It case you were wondering - it was Monday and its now Wednesday!

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April. Bloggers are challenged to write one post a day, (excluding Sundays) gradually working their way through the alphabet. 1st April is A, 3rd April B, 4th April C etc. Most participants focus on a theme to guide and structure their blog post. Participants are encouraged to go visit other blogs in the challenge. (I always stumble over how to explain what the challenge is and I now confess that I have basically lifted this explanation from my daughter, Fangirl's, blog post on the event. To see her theme reveal go here


This year I have chosen to make a patchwork block whose name starts with a different letter of the alphabet for each day of the challenge. I started getting organised for this not long after last year's challenge ended, combing through lists of blocks and choosing ones that I liked.

I left it for a while and then a couple of months back I went back through the blocks and made a short list of ones that I would make and then selected my blocks for each day. 

Then I started to make the blocks. Life can get hectic and I wanted to be sure to have the blocks done before the days came up that I would actually need to have the block done. 

Patchworkers all know that all those blocks out there that you see in quilts have their own special names. Some, particularly traditional blocks, can have multiple names. Funnily enough it seems that the more common and traditional the block the more names it can have. Patchworkers like to design their own blocks and quilts and in doing so give them names. Because patchwork has been out there for such a long time there isn't much new under the sun and many of these new designs and blocks are really just variations on a theme of blocks that have been around for decades.

Life has a way of ... well getting in the way of blogging. And as seems to happen to me April this year is going to be very busy.

The first year I did the challenge (2015) Fangirl, Fixit Guy (my husband) and I went to Malaysia for a week (plus travel days) in April. 

2016 I had 2 weddings (one of which i was bridesmaid for) in Yeppoon and Newcastle (that's were 1500 kms apart.) Then we travelled down to Melbourne to visit with our oldest son (The Beast) and to pick up our new caravan. 

This year I will be home for the first week, then I will be flyng to Brisbane to go see My Fair Lady at the theatre and will stay on with Fangirl till Easter when our family will gather together in the Gold Coast Hinterland to celebrate Fixit Guy's 60th birthday. I am really looking forward to that.

We will then have another week in Brisbane before we head down to Sydney to see my family and to celebrate FG's actual birthday and then return home in early May! So I felt I once again had to get really organised.

I have not only completed all the blocks but I have assembled the quilt top and back and am hoping that by the time I leave for Brisbane I will have managed to get it quilted. I really really really want to have a completed quilt by the end of April and because I am going away that means having it done by April 6th.

I have also pre written most of my posts or at least started to and scheduled them. This is what I have done in past years to help me keep up only I have now found out that this year the organisers of the challenge have changed the way they do things. In the past you put your name on a master list and the other participants in the challenge could go to that list and work their way through it in order to visit other A to Z challenge blogs. 

Because of the challenges to the organisers and moderators of the challenge to maintain the list (weeding out non participants, dead links etc) this year they are going to a daily tweet or facebook link up for participants to go to. That means my scheduling of posts isn't going to be as effective. I am still going to need to tweet the links and comment on facebook each day.