A little about me:

I LOVE QUILTS AND QUILTING! I see designs for quilts everywhere. I dream of the next one before I even get the top finished on the ones I have started. I look at magazines about quilts. I look up patterns on the internet. I watch quilt and sewing shows on TV. I join groups that discuss and make quilts. I doodle quilt designs when in waiting rooms and sketch designs when I see something that interests me when I am out and about. Did I say I LOVE QUILTS!?

I am happily married to a great guy, Chuck. We have a combined family of three grown sons and a daughter, and two grand-sons and a grand-daughter, plus others that I consider my grandchildren even though they really aren’t mine. I love them like they are! I am retired now, and still don’t have enough time to do all that I want. My husband retired for one whole day and decided he wanted to go back to work. I think he would probably either go crazy if he stayed at home, or drive me crazy one… so we are both happy the way things are.

I started a quilting group at a nursing home where each one in the group is making a quilt of their own. There is a gentleman in the group that looks forward to “helping me sew” whenever he sees me coming. He started off making stitches so big I could catch my toe in them, and I would take them out and have him re-do them. He didn’t mind. He would just laugh and ask if he was better the next time. He eventually did get better, at least for him. He always looks forward to quilting day, as do the ladies in the group.

A lady from my church, Shirley B. and I cook a free lunch for the local college once a week for the “Christ On Campus” ministries. This is our second year to do this. We usually feed about 40 to 45 young people, and hope the number will grow. I enjoy this. She and I usually plan the menu together and divide the cooking, so it’s not so much work on either of us.

Today after a trip to take my best friend, Barbara, for her chemo treatment we went to the fabric store for some fabric to go with some quilt blocks she had already completed. When we started looking at all the fabric and the design and color combinations, we planned and dreamed of other quilts that we could do. Isn’t that always the way it goes… one thing leads to another, and another, until you know you will probably never get finished with what you already have started if you don’t put your mind to it.
She wants to make Christmas gifts also, so we even got some fabric for that. She is just learning to piece quilt tops, and I am having a ball teaching her. It is really great having someone to talk quilts with and plan quilts with and shop for fabric for quilts with.

I have several quilts started: one for my husband (I had his family members sign the blocks for a memory quilt when we went to his family reunion); a couple of quilts to finish that my mom started before she passed away for two of my sisters and I told her I would complete them for her; one for each of my sons; and I will do the quilting on quilts that are being pieced by the group that I work with weekly at the local nursing home. There are probably more projects. That is just my list so far, not to mention what Barbara has started that I am helping her with.

I am not an accomplished quilter when it comes to the quilting part. I need lots of practice. I do tend to like to do things by hand, even though machine piecing and quilting is faster. But with practice, who knows?