September tomorrow!

Where has the summer gone! Been bringing in the tomatoes, freezing them; peeling and slicing apples; picking and making ready for jelly the grapes. Yep, guess it IS that time of year! Oh, and tomorrow is our last afternoon at the Wednesday Farmers Market. We have Farmers Market on Saturday mornings until the end of October. If you can help on a Saturday, please let me know. I really need you for the first Saturday in October.

In a week we have yet another QOV sew-in. Looking forward to the new-to-us pattern from Sharon Craig's Layer Em Up book and I have kits ready to use the stars from Moda's challenge. I think it's safe to say, we will be working with reds, whites and blue fabrics, which is a treat for us.

So, enjoy your Labor Day weekend and see you September 6th.
Rita

MY Saturday

This is the first Saturday this summer we didn't have to be up and out setting up at the Farmers Market. We lost our tent in last weekend's storm but we will be back at it on Wednesday at West Aurora Plaza. Aurora has been very kind and generous to us and for that I am very grateful. We are already collecting signed blocks for our 7th quilt!

I have been getting ready for our next sew-in. We, again, have options for our sewers. Wanda will be bringing along kits for Layer Em Up and I have some kits using the 10" challenge star by Moda. So, hope see you September 6th.
Rita

Weekend of Valor

Spent a nice rainy day quilting yesterday at the show. Hopefully, their "coach/rookie" teams brings us more quilters. The Gazebo-Quilters Guild did a nice job. Great display of patriotic quilts where you were encouraged to touch the quilts. Met up with Catherine Roberts, the founder of QOV, again. She's just as energetic s ever! They had a presentation of Quilts of Valor accompanied by patriotic music by the Sun City Concert Band. So, good job to your crew, Sue Bruss!
Rita

What it's all about!

GREAT day today at the Farmers Market. We presented our first signature quilt today to Michael W., who is an infantryman in 4th brigade Tenth Mountain (Army). He holds the rank of specialist and has been in Afghanistan for the last 9 months. Michael is based in Wardak Provence in Afghanistan. He returns to duty later this month. I will post pictures as soon as I get permission.

AND a thank you to Rick P for his salesmanship ability. Rick was working the crowd! If all works out, Rick (Army) and Gary (Navy) will be working the booth next weekend.

Rita

Scraps

For those saving scraps for Alberta, I will be in contact with Vicki next weekend. So, if you have some scraps you've been collecting, you can bring them over before next Friday (Aug 19th). I appreciate you hanging on to them until I put out a call for them. Thanks.
Rita

Normal?

Going back to a "normal" week this week. Been a summer of Farmers' Markets twice a week, a quilt show, a craft show (yesterday), sew-ins, babysitting for a beautiful granddaughter! So, normal will be FM, babysitting and even a hair cut!

Looking forward to the sew-in at the Quilt Fest in a couple weeks. It'll be nice to sit back and sew again without the "worries" and with my sister, Lolly. I haven't sat and sewn with her for over a year.

Have a great week! I'm working on a couple patterns for our Moda stars. If you'd like to work on some log cabins, give me a call. OR if you're in a designing mode, oh yeah, would love to hear from you.
Rita

Amazing turnout at the sew-in

WOW, you girls (and Bob) sure do get things done! Yesterday we were filled to capacity again---counted 20 people. Proof that "craziness" does produce though, came home with 29 labeled/finished tops! They are now all in pillowcases and in the shower stall :) If you haven't heard the shower stall story, ask me. That's a lot of pillowcases--speaking of which, we had pillowcase maker, label installers, border makers and quilt backing going on yesterday. I won't forget to mention the few who were piecing tops as well. I have not counted the backings yet, but I will update this post when I do...they're already in the car to hopefully go to some very generous machine quilters. Can't say enough about the machine quilters.

I think next month we will be ready for piecing something new which I believe we will have kits available thanks to Wanda, who what a trooper--comes to a sew-in with a migraine and still manages to get us thru a border demo.

Welcome to the newbies---sure hope you return.
Rita
Update: there were 32 backings put together yesterday! Do you realize that's a little over 115yards of fabric (average 3.6 per quilt).