The Name Game: Occasional Piece--Quilt

It's always exciting for me when I can have a real-life friend be the focus of The Name Game.

Elizabeth and I started our friendship the way so many quilting friendships have begun in this age of technology--through blogging. She sent me some selvages, and included some special French fabric. I thought that was so thoughtful of her, so in turn I made her a pincushion from her French selvages. And our friendship grew from there. Now I've even stayed in her home and have actually been able to touch many of the quilts pictured this week.

Not only that, but she is a member of the Mid Century Modern bee and designed our fabulous logo:

How did you choose the name for your blog?

The name started about when I was attending the University of California-Riverside as an undergrad in Creative Writing (I was a returning student, so it wasn't THAT long ago).  I'd just bought a copy of MSWord and in the registration they asked for my company name.  I thought about this. I like to write, I like to take photographs, I like to quilt.  I don't do any of them for money, for a job, so I would have to say that I did them occasionally.  So. . . piecing for a quilt, a piece of art (photograph) and a written piece--it all added up to OccasionalPiece for my fake company name.  I set up a blog, grabbed the email from Google and I wrote on that initial blog, including all my quilting and photography. 

Somewhere along the line, I split off the quilting so that people who were interested in that wouldn't have to wade through all the rest of my stuff, so then it became OccasionalPiece--Quilt. 

But. . . too many people didn't want to type that all out, so I shortened it to OPQuilt.com.  Whenever it's typed in, it mirrors over to my Wordpress blog.

Were there other names you considered, and can you share any of them with us?

See above.

Now that you are recognized by your blog name, are you happy with it, or do you wish you could change it to something else?

 

Well, I'm pretty happy with it and it's harder to change once people know you as this identity.

I still quilt occasionally, write occasionally and take photos whenever I can.  So, the name still fits, I think.  When I made the switch to this site, I transferred over my quilting blog posts, so this blog has quilting dating back about five years.  Somewhere along the line I got the bright idea to catalogue all my quilts--they totalled well over a 100, so that's what the 100 Quilts list is about on the blog.  Now I'm working on 200 Quilts, but have just started.

Thanks for inviting me to your Name Game, as I love reading about all the blogs and have started following a few that you've hosted.  Of course, we all know that YOURS is the best ever. (Note: Elizabeth is too flattering....)

Want to hear something exciting? Elizabeth came up with a great little giveaway from each of us. She picked up these cute buttons at a quilt show. Each button will also come with a little bundle of fabric. Elizabeth already has her bundles put together and they are really cute. Mine will be a surprise at this point--both to the winners and to me--we'll see what comes together as I reorganize some of my stash. Leave your comments here and I'll choose two winners at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Elizabeth will be doing the same thing at her blog.

So head on over to OPQuilt and say hi to Elizabeth, and spend some time not only looking at beautiful quilts, but also read some posts--she is a fabulous writer!

Coming up:
Kelli--Seriously, I think it needs stitches
Heidi--Fabric Mutt
Nancy--Owen's Olivia