It's A Guest Room Again - Well, Almost!!!

It's been a busy 2 weeks since I last posted.  I've finished a quilt and started a new one, but a good part of the time was spent on shipping the Hampton Ridge BOM patterns.  Getting ready for the first round of shipping requires that we have large numbers of patterns printed.  How many do we have printed??? - it's always a guess!!!!  So I had thousands of patterns (12 months worth) printed and that meant someone had to stuff them in the pattern bags and then I had to find a place to store all of them!!!  And that's where the title comes from.  They were all stored in my prettiest guest room and finally it's almost back to being a guest room again!!

All of these patterns a "team" of pattern stuffers and I look to my daughter Caitlin to help in that area.  She rounds up a group of friends that are interested in making a little extra $$$ while they watch their favorite TV shows!!!  We have a mom and daughter, a husband and wife and one of Caitlin's fellow kickball/soccer players.  What they each do with the money is even better - paying for granddaughter's dance classes, supporting a Coach handbag addiction, buying more quilt fabric and saving for a cruise!!!  I managed to get pictures of Caitlin and Courtney hard at work.  They were the ones that came up with their corporate titles:  "Director of Procurement"!!!!

Caitlin hard at work!!

 

Courtney had at work!!!  Check out the quilt on her couch - her Mom's a quilter too!!!

  As I was counting out patterns for shipping, I came across these 2 patterns!!! They were from Caitlin's batch.  I think I may have to bring in a Quality Control Supervisor!!!!!  LOL!!

 The girls are each vying for Employee of the Month!!!  Courtney moved out ahead after successfully stuffing all of her patterns without any errors or papercuts!!!

And when the girls were done, those patterns had to come back to my house.  Where do you store all of these boxes??? Why the guest room, where else!!!  Here's a couple of pictures of what this all looked like.  The table was used for counting.  I could barely move in there, but after 2 weeks I was finally able to get rid of most of the boxes and bins!!!  Check out the last picture - I have a guest room again!!!  Fortunately I don't have any guests visiting until Thanksgiving and hopefully by then the rest of the bins will be gone!!!

Caitlin figured out how to take a panoramic picture with my iPhone.

Thank heavens I didn't need anything out of the closet!!

 

Guests can even get in the beds now!!!!

During those 2 weeks I did manage to finish the Harpers Ferry re-do and begin the Lancaster re-do!!! 
 

New Harpers Ferry - love the grey in the alternate blocks

 

Lancaster re-do - just waiting for its 3 borders - narrow black print, pieced and wide black print

And now it's time to get ready for the September retreat at Camp Blanding!!!!  I'm so excited - what should I bring, where are we going to eat, what are we going to eat, what snacks should I bring, who's going to be there, and on and on!!!!  Definitely bringing Lancaster to finish and Paula is bringing a new quilt from her Bordeaux and Sienna collection for us to work on.  We'll also get to exchange our Snowball blocks - can't wait to see everyone else s!!!  I'm bringing some fabrics we can use for borders.  And then there's always the big question - do we want to do another exchange????

Big night tonight - Fall premieres are beginning - "Bones", and "Sleepy Hollow"
                               Season finale - "Under the Dome"
                               Netflix - last 5 episodes of "Revolution" - I need to finish this before Season 2 begins next week.
     So many choices for viewing while I finish the Spinning Stars for the pieced border for Lancaster!!!
I'll have to be sure my DVR is ready for taping before I leave for the retreat.  I don't want to miss any of my shows!!!

Until next time, happy quilting,
Mary Ellen

Hello September!!!

Today is September 1st and tomorrow is Labor Day and now it all makes sense!!!  This morning I found myself in my closet with an urgent need to wear my white pants and white shoes!!!  If you grew up when I did, then you know you only have 1 day left to wear white pants and white shoes!!  I know Clinton and Stacy (What Not to Wear) have laughed at that rule, but man I find it hard to do AND I live in Florida where white pants are a year-long mainstay!!!!

If that wasn't enough to push September on me, I found myself wandering through the Back to School aisles at Target!  Those notebooks and coordinating binders, markers, crayons and pencils were calling my name!  Where I grew up - Long Island -school started the Wednesday after Labor Day and my best friend and across the street buddy Susan and I had a Tuesday evening before the 1st day of school ritual - we packed our pocketbooks.  We went to each others house and put our new pencils, pens, tissues, wallets, etc in the pocketbooks we had just bought at WT Grant's!!  As we grew older and that Tuesday evening found us in different cities preparing to meet our new students the next day, we would call and mentally "pack our pocketbooks" as we caught up with each other.

August may be over, but I managed to get a lot done that last week!!  My two baby quilts came back from the quilter, so I bound the Stacked Coins Baby Quilt for Sebastian and the Charm Squares on Point Quilt for Eveline and actually got them off in the mail.  Side note - Sebastian and Eveline are Susan's grandchildren!!!  

Sebastian's quilt

Eveline's quilt

I finished Harpers Ferry and can I tell you how much I love this one!!!  We have made 4 versions of this quilt, but Paula tried something new this time and used a grey fabric in the alternate blocks - YUMMY!!!!!!  It's on its way to the quilters and the kits are being cut as we speak.  I will let you know when they are on the website!!

Harpers Ferry

Next on my list is Lancaster and I've finished 6 of the blocks.  I really am enjoying this whole pre-cut and bagged option!!!  I open a bag and bam, I'm ready to sew!!  Yes, I know, I'm spoiled, but isn't half the battle recognizing you have a problem!!!  It sure gets quilts done a lot faster and shouldn't that be my priority???? The more I get done, the more samples you have to look at!!!

 

Lancaster - 6 blocks

I'm going to watch some more of Dexter (I'm on Season 3 and I love it!) while I work on more Lancaster blocks today, but tomorrow is devoted to Hampton Ridge BOM.  It's time to ship the customer patterns to the shops!!!!  That should be an all day process - counting patterns, finding boxes to ship them in, running charges and creating shipping labels!!!!  I know, now you're jealous you can't have this much fun!!!

Until next time, happy quilting,
Mary Ellen