Binky Day

 Here's my friend Nancy digging through the stash of donated fabric we got.  She's going to take it all home and cut it up this week using the Accuquilt Studio fabric cutter and dies.  She loves to sew together the tumbler dies and makes the cutest quilts out of them.  I'm so glad she is also a teacher and also has the summers off.

 This whole bag is all BOY fabric!  What a great donation!

 Another bag of great juvenile prints.  The lady who donated said her youngest grandson is 13 and she isn't making any more baby quilts and the great grandchildren will get all new stuff so she is done with this fabric.  Yes, we will take it and make great quilts for kids out of it.

 There was also a bag of quilt tops from her mom.  This woman was an incredible quilter, or at least top maker.  How many of us can claim to be a top maker? :)  We love to make the quilt tops and then stop there.  This woman even made the bindings for all of them and then put labels on everything.  Each binding is labeled for the quilt it is to go with and the quilt top has a label pinned to it too.  One day I will be that organized.  HA.

 These are only a few of the 20 quilt tops in the bag.  I stopped taking pictures because my jaw hit the floor on the one with the 1 inch squares.

 I see these quilts in books and then buy the book because the quilts are just so cute.  Of course, that's as far as I ever get when it comes to making the quilts.

 Ever wonder what to do with those cute panel pieces you buy?  How about this cute quilt?

I'm going to have fun quilting up all of these.  I might even share a few with Carla so she can have some fun.  There's one with prairie points that I'm not quite sure what to do with.  I bet she's quilted one like it before and she can teach me.

While at the quilt shop, I met a lady who was the president of the Soroptomist Club.  We talked and she let me know she would love to have some quilts for the kids in the foster program.  I love having more places to give the quilts. Turns out I can pass them on to a couple of the kids that I already know who go to my high school.  They will even come pick the quilts up from me!

I was so excited, I didn't even get a picture of the 6 fleece blankets we cut and tied today.  Only three people showed up today, but that was enough to get some work done.  I'm still feeling tired from the flu.  Hopefully I will feel better for a more busy Quilt Day at Carla's tomorrow.  I know she will have me jumping.

It got me

I was hoping my super powers as a mom would protect me from the flu that has been jumping from kid to kid in my house.  Last night, I started feeling queezy and figured if I just didn't think about it, I could avoid it.  Mind over matter right?

Not so lucky.  I have no idea how so much fluid could come out of my body.  I am so dehydrated already and have only been sick for about 12 hours.  I only have a very low grade fever but am so achy.  From the boys course of illness, this is a 3 day sickness.  I really need to be well by noon Sunday because we are having quilt day.  Not sure I'm going to make it.  I made the mistake of trying to drink some water last night.  4 ounces went in and about 10 times that much came right back out.  It makes it difficult to take anything to make me feel better.

Carla will be gone Sunday so I may need to find a replacement to sub in for me or just cancel.  In the 10 years of Binky Patrol, I've only cancelled once.  Ugh.

Hopefully I can sleep some today.  There are two more people in the family and I'm praying neither one gets it.  They are both pretty good at staying away from the sickos.  I tend to get right in the middle of the battle zone and dare the virus to get me.  99% of the time my immune system does its job.  At least I don't have to go to work.

help, help

 I got two phone calls today from people wanting to donate fabric so we can make more quilts for kids in crisis.  I love getting these phone calls, but I either need to clone myself x10 or recruit more people to help out.  Good thing we are having two quilt days coming up.

 If you are local to the Vacaville, Ca area, shoot me an email.  Sunday from 1-4pm and Monday from 11-4pm we are working on quilts.  Sunday we will be cutting and tying fleece blankets and Monday we will be working on cutting up hopefully the rest of the fleece bits and sewing together a whole bunch of quilt tops.

I can't believe I can see the bottom of the pile of these super size 9 patches.  Of course, I said that once before and then found another box of them in the garage.  I can't believe I'm actually considering asking Carla to cut a bunch of them to give to the middle school kids again this year.  They do use up a whole bunch of fabric and they are nice to have to grab when I'm at the end of a roll of backing fabric.  They did give the kids a great project to work on for a whole year and the kids made like 300 quilts out of a bunch of donated fabric from Judy.

Carla is a super amazing woman.  She cut those quilt kits in like 5 minutes (OK, so it was probably like 5 hours, but I wasn't there so what do I know) and had them all organized and given to the middle school home ec teacher so they could all be sewn together.

All of the other projects we have come up with since have fallen flat.  We are waiting for Accuquilt to come out with a special die we have asked for.  They have it for the Go!, but that won't last for our purpose.  We do everything on steroids (aka mass produced) and while the Go! is nice for home quilting, in case you haven't noticed, we make quite a lot of quilts.  So, we need it for the Studio and supposedly the designer of the die has asked for it to be put out for the Studio.  Hopefully that will happen before the school year is over.  It's the Rag circle die, so the kids can make the quilts and have them all quilted when they are finished with them.

I bet they could sew the fleece rag quilts too.  Those are pretty easy to sew and just take a bit of patience to not catch the fringe in the foot.  And I keep finding more fleece bits in buckets in the garage.  Who knew I was a fleece hoarder?

busy day

 Today was multitasking on steroids.  Between cleaning and organizing, I had to start on the tennis patches for my husband.  I had been procrastinating as long as I could.  After 4 mistake patches, I think I finally got the bugs worked out and have them going smoothly now.  I haven't used the embroidery machine for a long time so I'm surprised I remember how to use it.

 I finished up this fleece blanket.  I only had 24 squares and had to take apart some of the squares and re arrange it.  It was 3x8 which would not fit any normal size kid.  So, I made it 4x6 instead.  Much better.

 I also got 3 quilts done on the robot while sewing and embroidering.  Rebecca's getting quite the workout lately.

 You can see where I moved the embroidery machine.  I got this new thread stand in the mail and it holds 20 spools of thread.  So much better than the individual thread stands that fall over and then the thread tangles up.  I ordered it from Amazon and it was about $30.  So worth it!  You can also see that I got another thread rack for the wall and have organized my thread by type.  I still have a few empty spaces for more thread as I come across it while cleaning more.

 I also quilted one quilt on my older machine with the batting scraps.  I love the texture on this quilt.

 Here's the weird print quilt that I couldn't find a back for for the longest time.  Not only did I find one backing piece, but I switched it out and used a totally different backing when I actually quilted it.  Happy to get this one done.

 Look how cute this one is.  Quilts don't have to be complicated.

 Dora!  My son loved her when he was little.  I hope she is still popular.

Here's a close up of the thread stand.  I got the 20 spool holder instead of the 10 because it was cheaper.  I doubt I will need this many colors at a time, but it is sturdy and keeps the thread from tangling.

More anniversary pictures

 I asked my sister to send me some pictures from my parent's wedding.  I don't remember seeing these before.  She got some good ones here.  They both look the same, just as happy, with a few extra wrinkles to show the time has passed.

 My dad sure looks like he won a prize here!

 This one was from their 25th anniversary.  What jokers they are

 My dad joked about putting on a clean shirt to dress up for the occasion.  I see he really got into the spirit of things and is wearing shorts too!  He makes me laugh!

 What a great picture of my parents!

 How cute are they?

From their 35th anniversary

Happy 50th Anniversary mom and dad

50 years ago, they were married.  They met on a trip to Europe.  My dad was from Kansas/California and my mom was from Poland/Germany/Canada.  They were the only two young people on the trip and it only seemed right for them to hang out together.

Fast forward 50 years and they still do everything together.  Congratulations mom and dad for making such a great milestone!  Wish I could be there today to celebrate with you.

The older quilting machine is back at work

 The sewing room is almost clean.  My little guy was throwing up yesterday, last night and all day today, so I spent the day cleaning the sewing room and taking care of a sick one.

 I have 4 bags of leftover batting scraps that need using up to really make the room clean and it's harder to use up the leftover batting scraps on the robotic machine because of the way the backing and top are loaded.  The smaller machine loads the back and top differently so it is easier to piece the smaller batting pieces together on it.

 I got these four quilts done today in between playing nurse and house cleaner.  Talk about multi-tasking.

I'm feeling quite positive about this summer.  Normally I just shift things around, but this summer, I'm not only shifting, but actually using up, sorting, purging, giving away, throwing away and organizing. Does this mean I'm starting to grow up?  What?  That's a scary thing!

RIP cousin Harold Dean

I remember visiting him when I was young, like maybe early teens or younger.  He owned what would be an original Dollar Store.  He would get damaged items from other stores and sell them for very cheap.  Things that might have a dent in the box, but be perfectly good to use items.

I remember he had a son with the same name as my brother and about the same age.  I just thought that was the funniest thing.  How could two people have exactly the same name, even the last names were the same, and we didn't have a last name like Smith or something easy like that.

My dad was about the same age as him because he was one of the youngest in his family.  His dad had 15 kids so there is a big age difference between the oldest and youngest.  My dad has nephews that are older than he is so I have cousins that are way older than me.  Keeping relationships straight is kind of hard to do.  I'm glad my dad wrote a book on our family history.  I had to pull it out just to double check to make sure about the 'cousin' status.

I got the news on Facebook that he passed away today.  Seems that's the way to get news these days.  I don't know what people without Facebook do to keep up with things anymore.

the first step on the road to recovery

 I've heard the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

These are the buckets I pulled out of the garage that were easy to get to.  I pulled empty buckets from the shed and dumped cardboard boxes that were in the garage and filled these buckets in about an hour today before I melted in the heat.  I'm hoping to get my son to help me move them into the shed.  My nice clean, empty shed will be full in no time.  You see, this didn't even make a clean spot in the garage.  It's a 3 car garage and you couldn't park a motorcycle in there.

Hello, my name is Marilyn and I'm a Fabriholic.

 I'm really going to get a handle on the fabric I have.  I can't say that I've been in denial, because I know I have a lot and use a lot, but maybe I didn't realize just how much I have.  These are the bags that are going to my friend who uses all the weird stuff that I'm given.  You know the polyester and silk and rayon and heavy stuff that is great for making bags and clothes, but not for making quilts.  She makes dog beds and costumes and all sorts of projects I just don't have time for.  She has about a zillion friends she shares it with too.  Nothing goes to waste around here.

 These buckets have mostly keepsakes in them.  Old toys from when the kids were little.  Wooden puzzles, trolls, plastic animals from way back when I was a kid even, hotwheels cars.

 Way back there are buckets of more fabric and yarn.

 More fabric and yarn and some kid books.

 Empty boxes I cleaned out that all had fabric in them.  A couple had brand new bags of stuffing.  Looks like I need to make some dog beds for the shelter.  Just wish there were more hours in the day!

 Christmas decorations I haven't been able to get to for a couple of years because there's too much stuff in front of it.  That's going to change over the next couple of weeks.  Legos and barbies.

 This is the biggest pile of stuff that bothers me the most.  My snowpeople family :) that makes me happy guards the pile.

 I'm set for batting for a while, but it's on top of the pile and makes it difficult to get to everything that needs sorting.  19 rolls of batting will need to find a different home while the sorting continues.  I just used up a roll of 50 yards so one of those rolls will be coming in the house.  I do go through it rather quickly.

 The shelves my son and I built this year are serving me well.  But, the boxes of stuff need sorting and purging.  I just don't know how all this stuff keeps accumulating.  Lots of legos and even more fabric here and on the other side of this shelf.  It would be so nice to have all of the fabric in one location so when I need something I know right where to go.  I found a bucket with kits cut and ready to sew.  Those came out and will be passed on at the next quilt day on Sunday.  Hopefully they will come back finished soon and be ready to hand out as a finished quilt.  They are rag quilts all packaged up as a quilt with matching colors and everything.  Not sure how they ended up in a bucket in the garage, but that's what happens when you get overwhelmed with too much stuff sometimes.

and finally a look from the inside garage door at the buckets of yarn and fabric.  Not so much yarn anymore.  There once was a time when I was given lots and lots of yarn.  I had about 10 times as much as now and slowly I've worked through it and had lots of volunteers help me make it into afghans for kids.  I know that will happen with the fabric too.

I hope you celebrate with me when it all gets organized or I go insane :)  One of these times, my organizational efforts has to work!