A kick in the backside.

Yep sometimes that is all I need.  

I especially need it when I am trying to figure out where I am going to store a large donation..... you know the one's I am not suppose to be getting because there is no room left in my house.  The donations that my husband only shakes his head at me (he doesn't even say anything anymore because he knows it won't do any good).  

This last donation was indeed overwhelming, and I kept shuffling the boxes from room to room rather than open them up and take inventory of them.

Yesterday afternoon I decided enough was enough it was time to clear those boxes.

Here is the donation.  The sack and all of the boxes were donated to Iowa Comfort from the Faith Lutheran Women's Auxiliary in Adel.  One of their members had passed away, and Becky's husband had donated all of her stash to them. BTW kudos to Becky's husband for knowing not to just ditch it all! Much of what Becky had was already completed tops or large pieces of cheater fabric.  Without a longarm the group would have been stitching for a long time!  The group asked if I would quilt one of the tops in exchange for what was in the boxes. I quilted that top earlier this month, and it will be placed in a silent auction around Christmas.

That top box was full of batting, a queen, two full size, a couple of twins, two craft size and a pillow form.   I can always use batting!  So I won't have to store it for long.

The next two boxes I opened up are the brown boxes.  And there are no words for what I found. So I will just show you.

 Here are three adorable panels that can go directly to the longarm....once their turn comes up.  No need to do anything to them other than quilt them.

Then I found these 5 chunks of fabric.  All cheater fabric, all bedsize!  I think the smallest is 58 x 90 and the largest is 90 x 117.

These all were measured and immediately went to the closet where I have finished tops patiently waiting for their turn on the longarm.  

The balance of what was in the brown boxes was this.

Eight extra wide backings!  Backing material is always needed here....but I have a feeling that Becky had purchased each of these with a particular quilt in mind for it.  See that little note attached to one of the backings.  It says pansy's and the dimensions of the piece.  Well....the pansy quilt was the quilt that I quilted and gave back to the Janet and Caroline..... guess I should have taken better inventory of the contents of the boxes prior to jumping in.  No worries I am pretty sure that I will be able to use it for another one of her projects. 

This is all I am going to show you for today.  The remainder of the donation is completed tops. I will show those to you on Saturday.... any idea how many there may be???

Stop back on Saturday to find out!

It wasn't the sand man that visited me on Monday....

I have been feeling icky all week.  At first I thought it was allergies, but my dear husband has it also and he does not suffer from allergies.  Plus we are both coughing and running low grade fevers.

Yesterday I was feeling a little better.  I really wanted to go and play in the cemetery.  For those of you who do not know that my second passion is genealogy....do not fear I am not that weird!  I have adopted the local Veterans Cemetery, and I am working very hard to document every grave-site in Find a Grave and the Iowa Genweb databases. I showed restraint and stayed home and worked on this weeks goals for Iowa Comfort instead. 

I loaded another one of Diane's quilts on the longarm, and I sewed the binding on one of her quilts that I had previously quilted. My hope is that I can quilt the one on the longarm today, and work on the hand stitching of the binding the next several evenings.

I also put together another donation to the center, which I will deliver next Tuesday.

For the past several years, the quilt group from Adel Quilting and Dry Goods, have made projects and had a silent auction for the Adel Library.  It is our way of showing appreciation for the wonderful sewing space we use several times a year.  This year the auction was a wonderful success...but there were 4 items that did not sell.  Jacque asked the group if it would be okay to donate these four items to Iowa Comfort, and the group agreed.

So here are the four  wonderful lap quilts that were donated.

 This is the only quilt that I am not 100% sure of who made it.  I think it was Nancy, who is one of our newer members.  If I am wrong let me know and I will correct this asap! This quilt reminds me of fall.  I think it would be a great quilt for a male senior citizen.

 This quilt was made by Jacque J.  I love the lime green pop in this quilt! She used fireside fabric on the backing and it is oh so cuddly!

 This quilt was made by Lonnie K.  Two color quilts are one of my favorites.  This particular quilt reminds me of my Grandmother, she had China in a blue and white pattern.  Funny what memories a quilt can invoke.

 This lap quilt was made by Nancy H.  This is the first quillow that I have ever seen.  It is a lap quilt that can be folded into a pillow for easy storage.  Such a great idea, especially if space is a premium for storage.... good thing I don't have any more air travel planned, or this one might not make out of my house.....just kidding.

 The entire quilt will fold into this pocket, and store so easily.

The plan is to get the labels on all four of these quilts this weekend.

With a sick hubby I have been staying upstairs longer in the evening while he rests downstairs.  These quilts will be the first quilts for the August donation, they won't make it on the list for Tuesdays delivery.

I want to thank all of the ladies for their generosity! Not just to Iowa Comfort, but to all of the local charities that they support.  I know that there are many!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Tuesday I start showing you what was in those boxes that Janet and Caroline brought me a couple of weeks ago.

The cleaning and laundry fairies are unreliable!

I have been counting on them every night for the past several weeks to show up and do their thing while I sleep!

Alas they let me down and yesterday afternoon I had to break down and do household chores instead of spending my time in the quilt room.

Although I did not make it into the quilt room yesterday. I did manage to remember to write this post....all the while fighting the sand man who thought a nap was in order for the afternoon.  

I bet you never thought you were going to get to see quilts 103 and 104.  I know you have waited longer than you should have but here they are finally.

Quilt 103

Quilt 104

These quilts were pieced by the ladies at the Christian Church in Adel.  If I remember correctly, Margaret rescued the fabric at our community sew day earlier this year and had a vision for these little quilts.  They are almost identical...except that little inner border. Great job ladies!  You gals are awesome!

Here is a close up of the fabric.  I think maybe this fabric was donated by Virgina.  But I will be honest, I have received so many generous donations that my memory is failing me so I could be wrong.

Donna whipped up a couple more afghans for us.  Always so soft and cuddly!

Love the hearts in this one.... do you see the soft pink, yellow, green and blue rows on the top and bottom of it? Reminds me of an Iowa sunset. 

This one is bright and beautiful also. The center always loves receiving these.  They are held on to for newborns.

I have no customer quilts this week, so I hope to quilt at least two quilts for Iowa Comfort this week.  One from Diane's pile, and the other from our small quilt pile.  I also plan on doing book work and getting a delivery ready for the center.  

Some how, some way, I also plan to bind one of Diane's quilts this week.  This will be and adventure.  You see Hawkeye has decided to become a lap dog (all 40 lbs of him).  At night he jumps in the chair with me and hangs out all night long.... I normally do my binding at night while sitting in front of the TV hanging out with my husband. Yes Celia I know if I would just machine bind I would not have a problem. This quilt it twin size, and I just don't want to try to it.  I haven't mastered the technique,  and I don't have space on my sewing desk. That is my story and I am sticking to it... LOL

Hope you all have a wonderful week.

i did it again

Owen is here for the weekend, and I failed to have a post in the que.  This time his visit is a little different....because if he doesn't think about it he just takes off walking. Of course if he thinks about it the falls to the floor and starts crawling.

Hawkeye has ear infection again, but thinks he needs to protect Owen so walks just one step in front of him....thus causing him to stumble.  I might be able to win $10,000 on funniest video's if I wasn't running around trying to teach a puppy how to behave with a baby.

Anyway no quilting until Sunday night here.  Promise to have a better post on Tuesday.

I need a building!

I had hoped to show you  pictures of a couple of finished quilts....but alas I don't have them done... I still have a little bit of binding to do on them. I will have them up on Saturday for you.

So instead of those pictures, I am going to show you the donation that came in on Sunday.

That top box on the chair is full of batting.  The box under it has some large backing pieces.  The sack is full of quilt tops...and I haven't even got into the other two boxes.

This donation has come to me from Faith Lutheran Church Woman's Auxiliary in Adel.  One of their members passed away and her husband donated Becky's fabric collection to the woman's group.  

The fabric is all really good fabric.  Their are many quilt tops in the donation....but alas all of those quilt tops are twin size or larger and hard to finish without a long arm.  

So Caroline and Janet contacted me at one of the open sew days, and a plan was made.  I am going to quilt one of the tops and return it to the group, and they are donating all of the above to Iowa Comfort.  Somehow I think I might have gotten the better end of the deal. 

I have the top that I am going to quilt on the longarm today, and hope to have it done by tomorrow.

In future posts I will show you more of what I find in those boxes...but it will be a couple of weeks, since I have other donations to show you also.

It is a busy time here at the Semmens house..... and I did have to have that conversation again with my husband.... you know the one.... "Lucy you have some splainin to do!"   (I just need to find the time to go thru the boxes and put everything away)

Have a great day everyone and stay cool!

Quilts 106 and 107

Yep I know that I am out of order.... but it is not a labeling problem this time!  Quilts 103, 104 & 105 are pieced and quilted but not bound yet.... so I am not showing them quite yet.

These two quilts were completed by Celia.  Celia was at our community sew day earlier this year and at the end of the day she took home these two quilt tops to finish for me.  She quilted and bound them, which means all I had to do was label them and get them documented.

Celia has a longarm, and thought these quilts would be great practice for her, not sure she actually needs the practice, but I am thankful that she helped out.  Celia is also the person that keeps telling me that I should learn to machine bind to save time.  I have to admit, she makes machine binding look easy.....but alas I have not mastered the process yet.

Here are the quilts.  

She did a great job with them didn't she!  

BTW I know I have told you before, that these particular quilts were all kitted from donated fabric.  Last September the quilt group sponsored by Adel Quilting and Dry Goods spent their meeting night cutting and kitting these quilts.  As most of us cut the necessary strips, Celia set out kitting the individual kits.  Mind you we had 15 bolts of fabric, being cut by 15- 20 people.  Their instructions were as simple as cut X amount of 4 inch strips, X amount of 2 inch strips and X amount of some other width.  As strips were cut Madelyn took them to Celia and she set out making kits.  Given the total lack of organization and the instructions she had to work with( my fault completely).  I think all of these quilts turned out amazing!

Thank you again for all of your support Celia!

I hope that in my next post I will have a couple of those quilts bound and be able to show them to you.

Have a great week end everyone!

Quilt 102

I didn't get a lot of time to work on Iowa Comfort Quilts last week.  I had seven customer quilts, of various sizes to complete.  The customer quilts could not have come at a better time, as I was about to the end of my bolt of batting.  That being said, I don't think I am going to do 7 in 7 days again for awhile....my feet and back really were bothering me a couple of those days.

Not quilting didn't mean that I was unproductive though.  I was working on binding quilts, and labeling quilts that came in for donation... but that will be another post.

Today's finished quilt originally was donated by Diane L from central Iowa.  Diane is a former quilt shop owner, and has twice sent me a box of quilt tops from her closet.  I know that Diane also rescues quilt tops and finishes them.... so I am not sure if this one is one that was a shop sample or a rescue....either way I am proud to have it.

Here is Iowa Comfort Quilt #102.

Here is a picture of both the front and the back of the quilt.

Yes I know the backing doesn't really go with the front of the quilt, but in the interest of finances, I am having to make do with the material I have on hand.  What the picture doesn't really show is that both the top and the backing are really rich fabrics.  The center of the blocks have specks of gold and orange in them.... which is why I decided to use this backing for the quilt.  It is actually very rich fabric also.

When I showed this quilt at my quilt circle, the first comments was that who ever received the quilt could use either side and switch back and forth.  Then I pointed out where the label was on this quilt.  Do you see it?  That white patch in the center of the quilt.  I might just have to rethink my label placement again......

I plan on working on the rest of the quilts from Diane's box over the next several weeks....and sprinkling in a few smaller quilts and donation quilts for show n tell.

Today is errand day again, and then I am working on paper work and binding this afternoon. 

Thank you again to Diane for all of her donations.

Everyone stay cool and dry today.

PS I think I will go on the hunt for sweet corn stands while out and about today.  Only one week left before it should start showing up! My husband will be so HAPPY!

Quilts 100 and 101

Just writing the title blows my mind!  One hundred quilts completed and donated to local central Iowa charities.  Just goes to show what many hands can accomplish, and the generosity of quilters hearts.

Lets get to today's show and tell.  These quilts were pieced together on our community sew day back in March by one of our volunteers, I wish I knew for sure who had pieced these....but I'm not sure.  It may have been Kathy B or her sister Carol.

Kathy and Carol have made every community sew day that we have had.  

What I can tell you about these two quilts is that Kathy took them home and quilted them for me.  

Kathy has a longarm business, and worked these quilts in around her customer schedule. In addition to her time she donated the batting and thread on these quilts.  And lucky me she also did the binding on them.  Leaving me only the paperwork and getting the label on them.... 

These quilts will be delivered at the end of the month, and will be loved and cherished, lets take a look at them.

Quilt 100

Quilt 101

As you can see we are still using some of those kits we made up last fall from the fabric that Deb S donated.  And we are still using Bonnie Hunters "Streak of Sunshine" pattern.  We are getting close to having all of these kits completed....but I still have around 10 or so that need to be put together.... so let me know if you would like a kit for home.

Poor Hawkeye he so loved # 101, and he just doesn't understand why he can't have it!

Kathy also took two pillowcase kits home and got them sewn together for us.  Bringing us closer to our goal of 75 for the year.  These two bring our total to 62 completed.

Once again a heart felt "THANK YOU" to Kathy B for getting these quilted and bound for me, and making the pillowcases.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday weekend and the weather.  Next post is Tuesday.

Another busy day and week

It is going to be such a busy week.  Over the weekend I had my grandson Owen, so nothing quilt related was accomplished....and that is a okay with me.

Yesterday I quilted a customer quilt.  The first of 7 that I have in my possession to quilt.  I was getting a little worried about mid June.  I was running low on batting, and I had no customer quilts on the books. We all know that the customer quilts pay for the batting for the donation quilts.  It all worked out, like it usually does and the batting has been ordered.  I'll have the customer quilts completed before the bill comes due.

Today is errand day, groceries, hardware store and veterinarians office.  

I am also dropping off quilts at the center this morning.  Quilts 83,85,86,87,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97, & 98 will all be donated this morning.  You can find them all under the tab above marked 2013 photo gallery.

I have also had some donations in the past week.  Here are a couple of them I wanted to show you today.

The top image is a pic of the bag, and the bottom pic is what is inside the bag. All kinds of batting for the doggy beds from Diane W.

Three more bags of scraps from Betty W. ready to go into the doggy beds.  We should be able to make three or more doggy beds from both of these contributions.  

I will work on them this week while quilting the customer quilts.

Time to get to my errands, everyone have a great day.