trying out my new quilting designs

 Here's my snail design.  I hope you can see how cute this is.  I know, snails aren't cute to most people, but when I was a little girl, I had a snail collection.  My mom wasn't too happy about my friends and me going around the neighborhood collecting snails and slugs and bringing them home.  Most of the time we kept them in jars, but sometimes the jars fell over and the lids came off and they escaped into the backyard and ate all my moms plants.  Sorry mom!  We would name them and bathe them and take them for walks.  My parents were very patient with my childhood hobbies.  This is a super quick quilt design.

 I'm having a great time designing and then trying out my new quilt designs.  This is the waving fingers and is super quick and adds texture to the quilt.

This waving fingers was perfect for this string quilt because the intersections were too thick for the quilt to stitch through, so when the  quilt machine came to the corners, it just bumped around them and kept on stitching.  The design wasn't so complicated that it kept going back over a corner.  Super quick and had the quilt done in about 30 minutes.  LOVE it!

And no, I didn't get dressed all day yesterday.  I was decompressing from the week long stress of the science fair.

I got an email this morning from a teacher at an elementary school:
Your work with students on these service projects is wonderful. If you still have quilts available, I have a little boy in my first grade class whose mom was just away for three weeks for chemotherapy and is now going away for 6 weeks to get a stem cell transplant and for germ free recovery. She's been fighting the cancer for over a year now. Jack only knows his mom is very sick and is taking medicine to help her. His dad, brother, and Jack have all shaved their heads in support of mom. The next six weeks will be hard on Jack (7) and his brother Ben (4). If there is a quilt of love available, he'd benefit from one. If not, no worries because that means another kiddo is feeling loved.

I love getting emails like this because I've always got quilts ready to go.  We will be providing a quilt for the boys and one for mom.  I'm so glad I have lots of people helping me out to make the quilt tops and put the binding on the quilts.  I have the easy part, collecting the fabric, storing it and doing the quilting.  I just wish I was a little more organized.

I also got an email saying there is another quilter with the same quilting machine here in Vacaville.  Can't wait to meet her and possibly recruit her to help out!  More friends to play with.  Yipee!