Yay, it’s my giveaway day! I am so pleased that Vickie Howell has offered up a signed copy of Button It Up on her Craft Corps blog today — I would love to have a buddy win it, so please stop by and leave a comment on her post before 8am Central time Friday, April 30.

Vickie’s new book is really something — an inspiring and encouraging collection of interviews with professional crafters, answering questions about how they got started with their handmade businesses or endeavors and what challenges have come up, and sharing personal and professional advice as well. I am very honored to be included.

The interviews are by turns funny, sweet, super-informational, and engaging. I particularly loved hearing so many details about how my personal craft hero, Denyse Schmidt, got involved in designing quilts and fabric. Reading it cover to cover, I was especially drawn to the interviews with Carol Duvall, Kathy Cano Murillo, Faythe Levine, Jennifer Perkins, Garth Johnson, Amanda Soule, Amy Butler, Cathie Filian, Natalie Zee Drieu, and Margot Potter. And the features spotlighting crafters around the world are awesome, too — it’s so cool to see what people are up to creatively!

During my own conversation with Vickie, she asked all about how Portland Super Crafty started, how I balanced (at the time) brand-new motherhood with creative and deadline work, and why craft activism is so important to me… and she gave me the chance to share my all-time favorite story about the tiny, amazing, and utterly lovely craft world we live in. J.J. from Kansas City, now Portland, if you happen to be reading this, it’s about the custom denim maternity a-line skirt you ordered from susanstars in 2002 or thereabouts, and how it magically somehow found its way right back to me when I was eight weeks pregnant with Pearl!

So please swing by the Craft Corps blog for a chance to win my book today (and a giveaway from Vickie herself tomorrow), and check out the book for tons of crafty inspiration. And a handmade maternity skirt story you just couldn’t make up if you tried.