Joyce is a MACHINE!

I mean that is the only way I can describe her.  Or she may be bionic.....maybe part serger or sewing machine.  At the very least she must have superpowers.  oh a vision of Joyce in her super hero costume just flashed into my head.  he he ( I am easily amused).

Joyce helped out at the community sew day.  Those quilts are going to be beautiful, but they are big (double sized) quilts and really can't be finished in a day.  So she took the one she was working on home to finish up.  In less than a week I got a call from her that she had a couple of lap size quilts that needed quilting....and she had the quilt top done for Iowa comfort... oh and the pillow cases that she took home to complete also.

Take a look at this beautiful quilt;

 This picture does not do it justice at all.  It is just too cold and windy for me to take it outside to take a pic.  Believe me it is gorgeous  and scrappy.

Here are the pillow cases that she sewed up for our challenge.  She went home with 11.  She has a thing about odd numbers so she had to whip up another one to make it an even dozen.  Isn't that cute!

Officially these are pillowcases 300-311.

When Joyce came by to pick up her quilts.... she spotted this on my desk.

I had been working on that donation of fabric from Tony, and I had taken all that cat fabric and made some pillow case kits.  So Joyce offered to take them home and sew them up for me.

Last week at Circle of Friends she returned them to me ready for donation. Again I say she must be bionic!

  

So these aren't cats fabric, but the fabric was unique.

Here is the cat fabric.  Well all but the two in the lower left picture.

Officially these are pillow cases 312-327

You would think that would be enough.  I certainly would.  But Joyce explained that she was out and about and found a yard sale that had some fabric.  SOOOOOOOOO

She whipped up another 8 cases for donation.

Officially these are 328-335.  Oh no it is an odd number!  Nobody tell JOYCE!  (wink wink)

Joyce thank you just does not even begin to cover all of your help and donations to Iowa Comfort... but I will say it again THANK YOU!

Tony thank you again for the donation of fabric.  We are already putting it to good use!

Make sure to come back next week.  I have finished quilt tops to show you.  Another great donation!

BEANIE BABIES!

Jo Anne S. sent me an email.  She told me that she had been watching the blog and saw that my selection of beanies was getting low.

Jo Anne was the lady that donated all of those wonderful Hope Quilts that were featured in the Jan. 20th post.

According to JoAnne she has been acquiring Beanie babies just about any where she can find them.  Originally they were being purchased to be donated to children's Christmas packages through a local church.

It seems that the rules of donation are changing.  Once gently loved toys are no longer allowed for donation at many organizations.  

This is what happened to JoAnne.  She contacted a second organization to see if they could use the Beanie babies...only to be told that only new toys could be donated.

Private thought....I really don't get that.  Maybe those groups get enough donations that they can require it to be new.  But I have to think that there are plenty of kids out there that would be happy with a gently loved toy.

On the flip side.  That churches loss is Iowa Comforts windfall!

JoAnne and I tried a couple of times to meet up.  It ended up that it was just easier to drop the donation off at Adel Quilting and Dry Goods in Adel.

What a donation it was!

Now that is two large garbage bags, and three grocery sacks.  

We have Beanie Babies!  A huge tub of them.  I think JoAnne told me that there was 149 of them.  Almost all of them still have the tags on them, and I don't think they were ever used.  

I will have so much fun finding the right Beanie to go with each Hope quilt in the future.  With this selection I will be able to match color or animal to the Hope quilt.  (no more sending a dog along with a quilt made out of cat material).

The only problem I foresee with this donation is......when my grandchildren come for a visit.  Owen knows that I have Beanies and he usually plays with them..... I am going to have to find a way to hide the tub from him....or I won't be able to find the floor as he searches for the perfect buddy for his visit.  Life is tough! wink wink.

Thank you so much JoAnne for this wonderful donation!  And for your generous spirit which guided you to start collecting the beanies.

Special thanks to Jacque at Adel Quilting and Dry Goods, for her continued support of Iowa Comfort and allowing her shop to be a drop off spot for Iowa Comfort.  With out her support I don't know where I would be.

Pillow cases and fabric donations

A couple of weeks ago I got a FB message from Colleen T.  She asked if I would be home, she had a fabric donation for Iowa Comfort.  As luck would have it, my afternoon was free for a drop off. 

I know I am sounding like a broken record.... but I really am not taking any fabric donations right now.  But in this case we were talking large pieces that could be used as backing.

Colleen showed up at my back door a few minutes later with these:

 Four very heavy bags of quilt shop quality fabric.  This fabric was donated to us by Tony J.  If I remember correctly, he came into the fabric's possession by acquiring someone else's stash.  He had to cull some of the fabric.... Colleen told him about Iowa Comfort and he graciously agreed to  donate it to us.

So I have spent the last several evenings, sorting the fabric and wrapping it on to mini bolts.

As you can see there was a lot of fabric in those sacks.  Great news for Iowa comfort there was a lot of fabric that could be used as blenders.  I spent yesterday getting these bolts into the shelves under my long arm.

One of those sacks had basically all cat fabric in it.  I decided that making some pillow case kits out of that fabric would be a good use of that fabric.  I have 15 kits ready to be sewn together.  

 ..

  
These are pillow case kits in waiting.  9 kits that need me to find a cuff or flange to get the kit finished. I am going to work on that this week.

This fabric are all large cuts that can be used as backing material. 

 In those five prints we have 26 yards of fabric.  15 of which is of pony material.  I see lots of little boy quilts being made for that backing.

This is all I have left to sort from this donation.  These are smaller,  irregular pieces of fabric.  I will work this week to get these ironed and cut into usable precut fabrics for future quilts. 

Colleen also sewed up 12 pillow cases for our challenge.  Aren't they bright and cheerful!  

Officially these are pillow cases 288 - 299. So we have met our goal of 250, and are 3/5 of the way to reaching 500 for the year.

Thank you so much Tony for the donation of fabric.  Special thanks to Colleen for steering Tony our way and for making pillow cases for us.

a glimpse of the community sew day

Last Saturday was the this years community sew day.  We had a nice turn out of volunteers.

Colleen stopped by to help sew a quilt top together.

Jan and Theresa came to help out.  Here they are cutting their layer cakes down into 6 1/2 and 3 1/2 strips.

Joyce also came and spent the day with us.  She had concerns that she might have trouble with scrappy.  She said she has a tendency to try to organize the scrappy.

Kathy B.every community sew day. was also here on Saturday.  Kathy has been present for 

Ally came by to help out.  This was her first time helping out.  She offered to sort my precut fabric by color and size.  Such a huge help.

Kathy had her machine purring like a kitten!

Oh No! Can I put these colors next to each other?

An advocate from CIAC stopped by to talk with us.  She let us know how our pillow cases and quilts are distributed. She also let us know that there is a need for additional volunteers.  Specifically volunteers that might be able to work directly with clients.  If you are  interested, please contact Megan H. for more information on the training sessions, at Megan@ciac91.org.

I am so appreciative of everyone who came out to help on Saturday.  Because we were making bed size quilts, and really pretty ones at that, no tops were completed by 4 on Saturday.  Each of the volunteers took their kit home to finish up.  I have heard from several and know that they are either done or close to being done.  I will have pictures soon.  I can't wait to share them with you!