Sending quilts

I heard on the radio yesterday that a church in West, Texas was handing out supplies and feeding the families.  I sent them a message and they said they had a request for blankets so would be happy to pass out any quilts I sent.

First Assembly of God
 PO Box 443
West, Texas 76691

Here's the address in case you want to send a quilt or to as well.  I will be sending a box out later today.

I also read that Judy is hand delivering them in June if you are still working on something.  Check out her blog
http://www.patchworktimes.com/2013/04/19/quilts-for-west-texas-folks/
to get an address to ship to.

It's nice to know so many people want to help out.

That was quick

I'm getting quilts ready to send to West, Texas and knew this one had to get done quickly.  I'm waiting on an address and then will have a box of quilts in the mail.  If you hear of any place or have a friend who could deliver, could you please let me know?
thanks

SOS quilt

 I'm calling this one Save Our Scraps!  I cut a whole bunch of blue scraps into 3 1/2 inch strips and sewed them together with a black square in between.  This one came out to be an extra long twin size.  I will quilt it up soon (I hope!).

Prayers for Boston

One of my students' dad was running the marathon today.  Her whole family was there and they left here here because she didn't feel like she could miss too much school.  She came in to class crying and asked if she could try to call her mom.  By the end of the period, she had finally heard back that her family was ok.  Her dad finished the race in just under 3 hours, about an hour before the bombs went off.

My prayers are with all of the injured and those who have lost a family member.  I'm hugging my kids a little bit more today!

Promise to my kids

I just picked up a car load of fabric this morning from a lady whose mother passed away 5 years ago.  She had at least this much that still needed to be sorted and she said she would call me in a couple weeks.

When we left, my daughter asked me to please make sure I gave away all of my fabric before I died.  I'm planning on living until it is all used up, which might just take me until I'm 300.  It's a good thing I have a lot of quilting friends who are helping me use up the stash as fast as it comes in.  Well, maybe not quite as fast, but I do love having all of these choices for quilts.  Gotta dig through these bags and pull out the fabrics for a new quilt :)  And finish up all of my UFO's, so that my daughter doesn't have to deal with that either.

a brown flower?

 I just love iris because they really do come in all colors, including brown!  Who would have throught a brown flower could be so pretty?

How do you feel about minkie?

• I have a love - hate relationship with it.  I love the feel of it and how soft it is.  I hate how it stretches and makes so much lint and fuzz.  Someone gave me a huge piece of the purple minkie and I'm using it up.  It takes up so much space on the shelf and I've been moving it around for over a year.  No time like the present to get it out of here and used and loved.  I just hope my binding buddy doesn't mind sewing the binding to these two quilts.  Minkie is really slippery too.  Maybe you have a trick or two for sewing with it?  I know they sell a lot and almost every baby I see around town has a minkie blanket.  Someone must have a tip on using it for backing.

Putzing today

Today I wasn't feeling very good and my ankles have been swelling up since Wednesday.  The doctor said to elevate my feet, so I've just been putzing around the house.  I must have done 10 loads of laundry.  Seriously.  How can a family of 5 go through 10 loads of laundry in a week.  Plus, I know I've done a couple more loads during the week.  Crazy.

 I decided I wanted to make a 'jelly roll' quilt, but was wanting to use up some of my stash of scraps.  I have 5 small buckets of pieces that are 1/4 yard or smaller and decided that today I would pull out the blue one and start cutting.  I'm cutting them into 3 1/2 inch strips and 2 1/2 inch strips and depending on how much I get of each, will try to make a quilt from each stack.

 This is the 3 1/2 inch strip stack.  Looks almost big enough for a quilt.  I'm going to start sewing these together end to end and see what I come up with.  I want to cut some black squares for in between some of the strips.  I love the look of the jelly roll quilts that have the black squares in them.

Here's my shelf with the other colors.  As you can see, some of the buckets are a bit overflowing.  Most of these fabrics came from my blogging friend Debbie of http://travelingquilter.blogspot.com/  She brought me all of these goodies and I've been working through them.  Seems like every time I get close to emptying one, I come back the next day and the bucket is full again.

Speaking of full, I got a phone call this afternoon from a lady whose mother passed away 5 years ago.  She said her mother had a whole closet full of quilting fabrics.  She hasn't been able to let go until now and wanted the fabric put to good use.  I will be picking it up tomorrow.  Sounds like I'm going to have a great day tomorrow and that I also need to get busy quilting!

No more time for migraines or swollen ankles!  I'm hoping that one of these days I will find a medication that takes away the migraines and doesn't have all of the side effects.

testing, testing

It's spring, which means student testing time.  We had a 2 hour meeting this morning on how to give kids a test.  Really?  We are teachers, I think we got the test thing covered :)  But, really, some of the questions some of the teachers asked left me to believe they had never given a state test before.  I can't wait until we actually get to walk around and stare at kids while they fill in bubbles!  Oh, joy.

I can think of a great way to cut the bugdet.  How about giving the state tests every other year, or maybe only every other school.  You never know if your kids will be tested, but we cut that budget in half.  Think of all the paper they would save from printing all of those test booklets.  And think, we could actually teach kids!  Oh, the horrors.

I'm still working on these cute, quick 9 patch quilts the middle school kids made up.  I have about 100 more to go, so I hope you don't get tired of seeing them.  I better order more batting soon.  Just waiting for another 50% JoAnn's coupon to come.  Right now the batting I like is on sale for 25% off, but I will wait until I can get it cheaper.  Sending a kid to college next year is going to cut into my charity quilting budget.  I might have to get creative.

Quilting time

 Finding a bit more time these days to do some quilting.  Didn't walk yesterday or today so I've added about 2 hours to my life ;)  Making some time to bust through more quilt tops.