Are you a member of the Quilts of Valor Foundation?

I am a member of the Quilts of Valor Foundation and have been for several months, but never really did logon to the website and really look around.  Our statewide rep for QOVF told me that I really needed to be looking at the newsletter at the beginning of each month because they have specials on there for stuff like thread and fabric.

I logged in and found that for the month of April, all of the Superior Threads So Fine! #50 threads are on sale for basically 50% off.  Hot Dog!  There are a select group of Superior Threads - certain colors of Masterpiece, Omni, and King Tut - which are on sale year round as well.

Anyway, I went strolling through their website and picked out a whole handful of colors. I went crazy!  I got 14 cones of thread for $111.  And then I called up and got some of the Masterpiece for piecing as well.  What a deal!  My membership definitely just paid for itself.

Loving Spring in the Garden

I dearly love to see all of the plants turning that lovely spring green and making buds and blooming!

Quilting Progress

I quilted three quilts on Saturday - one for Katherine, my friend's granddaughter; one for me and one for Mom to give to her new great grandson.

I am certainly making some progress on getting those cards off the board.  For now, I have one quilt for a client, six for Mom and 2 for me waiting to be quilted.  Believe it or not, it looks a lot better than it did a couple weeks ago.  You can even see part of the board in the background of the Circle Dance quilt.

Kat's Take 5 Quilt

My Circle Dance

The embroidery on Sawyer's quilt

Three Weeks

It's been three weeks now since I planted those tomato plants and squash seeds.  The regular rain has really done wonders with these plants.  Mom says when it rains, you can almost see them grow!

Don't you just love Spring?

I love to watch everything to turn green and all of the flowers start to grow and flower.

How does your garden grow?

This year I decided that I wanted to plant Tomatoes and Squash.  I finally made it to the nursery on the Saturday just before Easter and I got them planted on Easter Sunday.  Three little Celebrity Tomato plants and lots of little summer squash seeds.

I heard on the radio the next day that it is tradition to plant on Good Friday (or Easter weekend in general) to have a good harvest.  Wow!  It seems I just stumbled into it without even trying.

I was told to keep the tomatoes watered.  To water then every day, because they like consistent watering rather than soaking and drying and soaking etc.  I only had to water them two days in a row and it has rained at least a little bit every day since then.

I was truly amazed.  Now my garden is planted in containers and it is not much, but I was so surprised to see how quickly those little seeds were up and running.  5 days from when I planted them, there were little plants there.  Woohoo!  

I decided that I need to take pictures every Sunday so I can really see the progress of them growing.

So, here goes!

Easter Sunday

  

5 Days

1 Week

2 Weeks

Too Much Pressure

Sometimes, when I look at the board, I see all those quilts waiting to be done and the pressure just weighs me down. 

I quilted FIVE Wheelchair Quilts today, just to get those cards off the board.  See, it works!

Roses and Daylilies are starting to bloom

And some Columbine

Organization!

Several times now, I have come up with the ultimate organization to keep track of my quilting projects from start to finish.  Well, I finally decided that I had to keep track of things separately.

This is my current organization for keeping track of quilt tops to be quilted.

I have an index card for each quilt top in the waiting list.  It contains the name of the person it belongs to, the name of the quilt top, it's size, the sized needed for back and batting.  I put check marks next to the back and batting when I know I have them and I can tell if a particular quilt top has all parts and is ready to go.



Then it goes on the board.  The left side of the board is for my quilts.  The right side of the board is for Mom's quilts.  And off the board, are other people's quilts.  If it has all of its parts ready to go, it goes toward the top.  If it is waiting on something, it goes near the bottom.

Then I have a shelving unit where I stack everything that is waiting.  All of the parts associated with each quilt are folded inside the top to keep them together.  For other people's quilts, I usually keep them in the bag that they brought them to me in so that nothing happens to them.  

The nice thing about this system is that I can see at a glance how I'm doing by just looking at the board.   The bad thing about this system is that I can see how many quilts are on the board waiting.

I guess that there are pros and cons to everything in life.

I dearly love going on quilting retreats.  I love all of the comradery with my quilty friends.  The food is fabulous!  I get some much done, etc.  The only problem is that when I come home from a retreat, my board goes from 6 to 15 overnight, especially if Mom was on the same retreat.

Back to the old way

Been doing lots of reading.

Slacked off on making lists.

Stopped getting as much done.

Hmmmmm.  I wonder if there is any correlation to those things.

Trying to get back into making lists or at least trying to plan things ahead.

Retreat coming up again this next Monday.  Can't wait!  Hope to get binding on 4 quilts and want to clean out more scraps and make 3 or 4 wheelchair quilt tops.

Saw an old friend yesterday.  She was visiting from out of town.  Great seeing her and some of the old gang from work.  About half were retired and half were still working. Still prefer not working to working.  Oh yeah!

Been trying to teach our hyper dog Izzy how to walk on a leash.  Most days she does pretty good, but we don't go very far.  Hope that one day soon she'll be behaved enough that Mom can walk with her rather than just me.

Started our new Modern Cotton Robin this past Monday at our Modern Quilt Guild.  The first round always seems to be the biggest challenge for me.  I am looking forward to the reveal.