June quilts

For some reason, I can never come out with the right number of quilts when I go to count them at the end of the month.  I know I did 30 quilts and yet there are 31 in the picture.  Oh, well, one snuck in here twice.  On to July!

I did it, 30 quilts in 30 days

 7 quilts done today, even with a terrible migraine.  No excuses for being lazy.  Some days I get more done when I feel terrible because I feel worse when I sit around doing nothing.  Tomorrow I get these and all the rest to my binding buddies and then let's see what I can get done for July.  Hopefully twice as many since I won't be going anywhere and won't have any work.  There are three quilt days planned for the month, which means lots of quilts cut out and hopefully sewn together.

just keep quilting

 Wow, horrible migraine day today.  Not sure if it's the heat outside, the food I ate today, the stress level around here or just what, but I had a headache last night after taking my son to swim lessons and woke up with it again this morning.  I just can't seem to get rid of it today and it is getting worse as the day goes on.  I've taken just about everything I can throw at it and it only makes it worse.  What else can I do, but just keep quilting.  I have one more quilt on the robot and one more on the manual machine, which leaves one more after those are done to reach my goal for the month.  Not sure if I will get them all done as I can barely stand up.  But, maybe after having dinner I will feel better.  Surely I couldn't feel worse!  I even tried taking a nap today and that didn't help.

remember these quilts?

 I had the goal last summer to finish them all up and then I found another box of quilt tops in the garage.  I STILL have a whole bunch of them waiting patiently to get finished.  It's times like these that I'm so happy to still have a whole bunch of them.  I have 25 quilts done for the month and it's the final day.  With my goal of a quilt a day for the year, I have 7 quilts to do today.  Out come these little guys and I've got 2 done so far today.  7 quilts in a day is doable when you have these little guys at the ready.  Throw on a whole bolt of backing fabric that was recently donated and load these guys on one after another and before the day is over, I just may be caught up.  If I can get both machines going, I may be caught up by lunch :)

Trying to play catch up at the end of the month

 I can't believe this is the end of June.  I'm behind in my quilting goal of one quilt a day and will have to do 6 more quilts to catch up.  Not sure that's going to happen, but I will keep working.  Next month I don't have work or travel.  That means more quilting time.

It's a good thing I have places for all of these quilts to go.  I could make 100 quilts a day and still have need for more quilts.  Plus, enough fabrid to keep up with the demand.  The only thing holding me back is me!

little swimmer

 When I drove down to pick up my daughter from college, my youngest son came with me.  Every time we drove over a bridge, he would get really scared that we would fall in and he would drown.  I didn't realize he had such a phobia of the water.

 I'd taken him swimming in the summer before, but he had never had swim lessons.  Some time in the last year, he decided that water was a scary thing.

 So, I signed him up for private swim lessons this summer.  His first swim lesson was last Tuesday.  The instructor was great.  She is really patient and spent the first day just getting him used to the water and encouraging him to put his face in.  He wanted nothing to do with that.  Yesterday at his second lesson, he jumped in and went under!  Wow, talk about a quick learner!

At the end of the lesson yesterday, I had a hard time getting him out of the pool.  I'd say the lessons are a success so far.

sometimes simple is perfect

I love this simple 8 1/2 inch squares quilt made with blues, greens and browns.  I need to cut more of these colors and send them over to my friend to sew together.  Sometimes simple is best.  I quilted it with the new quilt design I did yesterday called wood grain.  It is a simple design, but sure takes a long time to quilt out and uses up a lot of thread.  It adds a lot of texture to the quilt so in the end is nice, but I like quick quilts.  I have so much fabric to get through and so many kids needing a hug, I need to be able to quilt 5 things a day, not have one quilt take 5 hours.  Let's see what I can come up with today.

I'm designing again

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwZHidJm71AwTkFMVnlienRGUlk&usp=sharing

 I'm working on some new quilting designs and you can find them on my google drive linked at the top of the blog.  This one is supposed to be wood grain, but may remind you  more of an oil spill.

This was supposed to be fire, but my son said it looked like deer antlers or branches and I thought it looked more like a coral reef.

I'm trying to come up with simple textures, but the more I work on them, the more complicated they become.

big quilts for big kids

 It is so much easier to make and quilt little quilts for little kids, especially little girls.  Most of the fabric that gets donated is flowery and pink and just cries out to be made into quilts for girls.

So, whenever I can and whenever I remember, I try to get people to make quilts for bigger boys.  When I got the text asking for quilts for the kids displaced by the fire last week, I had plenty of quilts ready to go for the girls, but nothing ready for the boys.  I'm busy cutting more fabric that my daughter matched up for some boy quilts and will pass that along to my friend to give to her mom.  She can whip out these twin size boy quilts in no time.  I gave her about 10 and she had them done in 2 days.  I only wish I could keep up with her in the cutting, quilting and binding department.  Good thing we are having 3 quilt days in the next 3 weeks.  July 7, 20 and 21 if you have those days off and want to join us.  Two will be at Carla's hour, the Mondays and one will be at A Quilted Heart.  All promise to be productive work days full of cutting and sewing.

quilts finding homes

http://www.news10.net/story/news/local/2014/06/20/grass-fire-highway-near-fairfield/11167027/

While I was in Colorado, I got a text message asking for quilts for a couple of families whose homes were damaged in a fire near where I live.  The link above will take you to the article and news coverage about the fire.

When I got home, I called my friend who does the bindings and asked her if she had any quilts ready.  She quickly got 7 quilts bound.  Of course, we have more girl quilts than boy quilts, so I quilted up some more boy quilts and dropped off a big bag of quilts today so the kids could pick out a favorite from the bag.  There were 6 kids and I dropped off 15 quilts.  The organization that asked for the quilts works with the local homeless population as well as low income families so the rest of the quilts will find good homes very soon.

I think I've found my quilting mojo.