Goodies for NJ Soldiers

Jim & I traveled up to the Armory in Toms River this morning to drop off a carload of goodies to the Support Arms group.  In the car were 50 grocery bags of goodies!














We drove behind the Armory to a pretty blah building that totally disguised the beehive of activity within.

A large group of volunteers were sorting donations into boxes on assembly lines.















The bags we brought were quickly emptied and sorted.

Jim schlepped while I took pictures.

It's a pretty organized production!

And here are donations boxed, shrink wrapped and ready to go.  I'll put a bet QP's donations were boxed & ready to go by the time the group left about 1pm!

I'd like to thank everyone who donated to our NJ Soldiers Collection this year.  There was a woman who sold her handmade items, took the money (about $300) and went to the grocery store where she purchased 25 bags of items to donate.  Someone else sent a box full of travel toiletries. And still more of you dropped of an item or two.  You all did a great job and I thank each and every one of you!  The generosity of quilters is amazing!

I'd also like to thank the volunteers at the American Military Recreation Services organization for donating their time and skills to send a little bit of home to soldiers overseas.  You can still donate to this fine organization, they're at the Toms River Armory Tuesdays from about 8:30 till 1.  Or you can donate monetarily by going to their website for instructions www.supportarms.org

Till next time

Baby Lock Tech

I'm at the Baby Lock dealer convention in St. Louis - this is the veiw of the arch from our hotel window. The arch is a National Park with a great museaum underground that stretches from one base to the other. If you're ever in St. Louis - go up in the Arch!

Here are some pictures from the past couple of days.

This is the new Sashiko machine - very cool. Here are a couple of samples the educators have done with it.

A pretty top for a little girl's dress!

And a cute top for a play suit. Sashiko is everywhere here!

There are also new sergers where you thread ALL of the looper threads, push ONE button and all the loopers thread at once! I have that class tonight.

Jim took the class for the new Jewell software - VERY neat.

Today I took a class Eileen Roche - the editor of Creative Embroidery Magazine - did you know she grew up in Wildwood? I'm trying to talk her into a visit east to see the family and teach for us. Stay tuned! Here's my project from class today - stipple & applique in the Magna Quilt Hoop - all in one step!

Debbie

Christmas is Coming!

Yikes! Christmas fabric has arrived at the shop. What was I thinking when I said it could be delivered the end of March???? It sounded ok in October but I'm just not ready to deal with Christmas, I just got the last of this past Christmas's stuff back up in the attic!

It's Nancy Halvorsen's line from Benartex and as usual, it's pretty. Nice panel, and nice coordinates to go with it. I forced myself to put the panel up on the website but have been dragging my feet with the rest. It's in the shop and for those of you too far away, I will need to be goaded into the Christmas spirit to get it done!

Sigh - it's another panel. I like it, it will be cute when somethings done with it - I just have to sneakily talk someone else on the staff to taking it home and doing something with it!

We vended at the BeachPlum Quilters show last weekend. We were next to Julie from Julie's Sewing basket - who has great embroidery stuff! We set up our booths so we could sit, stitch and gossip. It was a nice way to spend the day, chatting with Julie and all the customers at the show. I finally got the pillow top stitched I've been working on since February. Ok, not every day, not even once a week . . . but I did get the last few flowers stitched and this week am actually sewing the nine patches for the border.

I even took the first couple of stitches in my next redwork project! I'm making this as a wall hanging in my guest room.

My panel mission continues - I found three bolts of a Beatrix Rabbit book in the backroom so I took one home last week and came up with this. I love Beatrix Potter!

Till next time.

The New Year

It's already Jan 2nd! The holidays are done and that wierd week in between Christmas & New Year's - when everyone feels like they should be on vacation but they aren't - is done too. I like this time of year, it's cold, sometimes there is snow - it's quilt & cocoa time!

I'm working on a few samples for the shop - Scrap Therapy starts this month and the samples need to be finished. I've finished one - quilted and bound! - a sunflower table runner and am working on the lap quilt. I chose a blue kind of old fashioned calicoey fabric for my focust fabric and am yanking things out of my stash to make the rest. Some of that fabric is REALLY old! I've had a good time going through my stash wondering why the heck I would have bought a particular fabric to wondering why I didn't use a particular fabric before!

I'm also working on a queen size quilt for the bed in the shop lobby. All I have left to do is the second half of the inner border and to put the outer border on - although I have to say that's all I've had to do for almost a month now. Not sure what the mental block is there! It's a gorgeous quilt from a simple pattern - rail fence. The fabric is what makes the quilt, soft pinks, roses, greens and creams from Timeless Treasures - very shabby chic. It will be a great quilt and won't go with anything in my house at all!

I need to design two quilts - one for the shop hop and another for QuiltGalleryShops.com. They both need to be done pretty quickly. The shop hop one is first and I haven't thought of anything for that yet but do have a pretty bolt of fabric I am going to use and the Quilt Gallery Shops one is designed but the fabric hasn't arrived yet.

What's the saying? We work best under pressure!

Debbie