Today's finished quilts

Here are today’s finishes…. The countdown is 24?  I think I've lost count.

Blogger is still not letting me reposition the photos. One is a clothing quilt from the 5 I am making and the other is a topper’s quilt I put on the machine Saturday. See how heavily it is quilted? It took 3 days to finish.

I always feel as if there is a race going on between me, my waiting list, and time. Time always moves fastest with the waiting list a fast second. Me….I’m left way behind. Today I feel as if I’m catching up to them again. Maybe it’s just that I am a little more relaxed today. My 24 year old grandson is on his way home to Alaska. I love him dearly but his being here has been very stressful.

Now that he is not occupying the fabric storage room; I can get in there to sort through for what I might use in my guild challenge quilt or one of the charity quilts I’ve committed to creating. Or maybe I will have time to quilt one for the fair. We shall see…. First, I have to make phone calls to the next few people on the waiting list.

I know the toppers in the quilt world wonder why the waiting lists of machine quilters are so long. I’ve even read on the internet the anger over it taking as long as a year to get a top quilted.

I’ve thought about it and thought about it for many years but have yet to come up with a really good way for predicting how many names to put onto my waiting list each month. If I over book I’m continually stressed about staying ahead of the work and want to quit. If I put too few names on the list then I worry about paying the bills on time. Maybe while I am taking my vacation from quilting I will come up with a solution.

Later….

No finishes today

No finishes today. I put a quilt on the machine Saturday and haven’t finished it yet. It is getting a lot of quilting.

We had our guild meeting yesterday. It went pretty well I think. Before going to the meeting; I took the time to type up some research I had done about how to create a prize winning quilt. Hints like bindings should be filled and the best way to add a hanging sleeve. Maybe I was being too pushy by taking this on as a project but someone had to do it. The group invites new members when a member quits. The new person has no idea what the objective of the group is and no one seemed to want to take the time to explain….except one thing…that we are trying to win a quilt contest.

In my opinion, there is far more to it than just creating a quilt to enter. The group must become a team the same way any team works together; just like being on a baseball team or a soccer team. The quilts must become eight parts of a whole and work together. No one can join a team without at least being told what the game is about and how it works. I hope no one took offense at me taking that initiative. But…. Someone had to do it.

I picked out a few fabrics for my quilt and so did a couple of other people. I have not only this quilt to finish by spring but also 3 other pictorial quilts to have finished at about the same time for charity auctions. I have to finish quilts to enter into MQX and MQS in the spring too. The Christmas rush has started already. As the saying goes… Christmas in July. I’m looking forward to finishing up in time for me to actually enjoy Christmas with my family this year.

Ok, time to go to work again. I can’t finish that quilt until I get in there and do it….

More finished quilts

Today’s finishes…. The countdown is 26. Or at least I think it is?

Remember the clothing quilts I created a few weeks ago? Well, this is two of them. I started with only creating 3 then it was increased to 5 by the customer. I still have to finish piecing two. I hope to do that this weekend. I want them all quilted and bound by next weekend if I can.

The other is a customer made top.

This post is short because I want to get an early start in the studio and I can’t think of much to say this morning. My mind is still stuck on working out details of paperwork.

Blogger is not letting me put a title on the page today. I hope they work the problems out soon.

Filing of paperwork started

I hope the pictures show up for the readers of my blog. I think the count down is at 29. As you can see from the first two pictures; I need more practice on my backtracking over stitching. On the front it looks pretty good but on the back with a contrasting thread it is awful. A close up picture really shows up the bad stitching. The first two pictures are the back of the red log cabin with stars quilt.

I opened my front door and stood on the porch this morning about 4 am to listen to the birds sing and see what the weather is like. I do this almost every morning waiting for the coffee to brew and before I sit down at the computer. Anyway, there is this boy about 12 or 13 running up and down the street with his pants and underwear down around his knees. He was saying something I couldn’t hear very well and his friends are on the porch across the street just laughing away. He spots me and says “oh, hi” and continues to go up and down the street showing his birthday suit. Definitely NOT what I wanted to see at anytime let alone at 4 am! I shut the door and went to the computer.

I think the problems of the email have been solved. Blogger is still working on the problems of adding photos. I can add them but I can’t be sure of where to put the descriptions while composing an entry.

My brother brought me the rest of the things of my mother from the storage bin. I spent an afternoon going through all the papers. Shredded most but I also found some family pictures. These were truly a treasure because some were baby pictures of myself I didn’t know about.

My grandson from Alaska is finally going home! I love him but he has out stayed in welcome and its time for him to go. I bought the plane ticket yesterday and he leaves Tuesday morning. I will need a few days to recover from his visit.

I haven’t gotten around to making an appointment with a financial planner yet. I’ve had too many other things to deal with the last few days. When I sit down to talk with someone about money I want a clear head and as little stress as possible.

The next day after going through my mother’s papers; I took a day to go through some of my own papers. I only worked on the business papers; personal papers can wait for awhile. I have everything sorted by month for last year. I didn’t realize until I started sorting that I hadn’t done any filing last year at all. I just wrote everything in a notebook then tossed the papers into a shoe box. This is not good for a person who likes to be well organized.

I’m going to post pictures and ideas about how to prevent paperwork pile up as soon as I find a solution that will work for me. I have to give it some thought. Maybe by the time I figure out a great organizing solution blogger will have worked out its problems too.

Ok, time to get off the computer and get to work. My SIL will be here this morning for another day of quilting. I need to get done as much as I can before she arrives.

My computer does not like me anymore

Ok, just when I get used to working with something on the computer it all gets changed around! Without notice! Buttons that used to be there for clicking have disappeared. New computer jubberish has taken the place of the photos. Do these people sit around all day scheming to make life misserable for the rest of us?

I have pictures to share, several pictures in fact. But when I load them into blogger all I get is computer jibberish; no photos. I need to see the photos in order to type up a description.

I did check the blogger help line to see if they are working on the problem. Yes, there is a notice posted that they are aware of it and are in the process of making improvements.

So.... until blogger is fixed I can't send pictures and it may become difficult to create a post. I will do what I can and catch up when the changes to blogger have been fixed.