General's Wives quilt(s)

My Dad always said "If you have a frog to eat, eat it first thing in the morning. If you have more than one frog to eat, eat the biggest one first." I know this was Dads wording of a quote by somebody else, and I have looked it up a while back and read the original quote, but I like my Dads version. I often tell my kids to "Eat the Frog" or Eat the damn frog" depending on how tired I am of looking at their frogs!

I am eating all my frogs this morning, so I can sew this afternoon.Right now I am on my 15 minute break. Check out flylady.net. I love the theory behind "flying", but I am not always good at staying on track!

The key to being a successful Quilter is the right amount of organization mixed with the mess of creating. My sewing room is pretty organized using the deep Billy shelves from Ikea. The end shelves are filled with fabric, most of it folded neatly and organized by color on one side, and theme on the other. Those shelves have glass doors so I can see my stash. The TV, wii (for netflicks) and DVD player are in the center, with wood doors below to hide the projects I am working on. Bookshelves on both sides of the TV unit. Sounds nicely organized, right? Well, it would be if there weren't bins of fabric that don't fit into the shelves. Then I watch an episode of Hoarders, and wonder if that is my future... Kidding ~ it really isn't that bad! Watching those shows really does help weed out the things I have that mean something to to me and the things that I just have... got as a give and never used, bought, used once and put it in a drawer, or a bin and never used it again.

I am on  a mission to lighten my load in the next two years. In two years my baby boy will head off to college. I will be alone. OK ~ not really, because there is the herd of pets still here. I do not know what I will be doing by then. Adjusting to life with out my Glenn. There are a few paths I am considering, but what ever path I choose, I will be selling this house. One of the ways I am trying to lighten my load is to finish the quilts I have started, make the quilts I bought all of the fabric for, and get rid of the bins of fabric, either by using it, or using enough of the fabric on the shelves to make room for what is in the bins. I have a list of about 15 people that I plan to make bed size quilts for. These are my best friends from High School that were married before I started quilting, so I never made them quilts, Glenn's Best friends who were all here for the funeral, and some other special people in my life.

Right now I am working on "The General's Wives quilt". Well actually I am making six at the same time. I bought the Kit so I would have the pattern, thinking that would be one of the color ways. The kit as enough fabric for two quilts except for the outside borders. So I bought 3 more yards of the same fabric and now there are two. I started pulling for another quilt and came up with a blue/tan combo, a red/gold combo and a floral combo. There is enough of the blue/tan combo for two quilts. which is good because that is the color I will be keeping one of! The other five are going to some friends of mine who just happen to be General's Wives... along with being amazing women in their own right! They are all wonderful mothers, one is a retired Air force Colonel Nurse, one teaches the deaf and translates spoken word by signing in classrooms so deaf kids are mainstreamed. One is what everyone would think of  as the Southern lady, a true Steel Magnolia. Each of these women have been wonderful friends to me and knew the right things to do when Glenn passed away. When I saw the quilt pattern I knew I would be making several versions, and I picked the colors to suit their personalities. I will be posting some pictures of my progress.

This is what I started with.

I can see six quilts there, Can you? The reason I wanted to get a photo of the before is there seems to be a weird phenomenon of making large scrap quilts and there still being the same amount of fabric when you get done as when you started. I just want to document what I started with... Six King size quilts should make a pretty big dent in this pile right? We will see what is left at the end.

Time to get some chores done so I can go make a block ~ six times...