Where In the World is Kathy Ellzey?

I’m here, but buried under a huge pile of customer quilts. I counted today… 24 (I'm making progress!) 22 quilts to get done before Christmas break, which I plan on starting on the 17th of December.

Why so many? I’m a softie… when desperate quilters call with the gift quilt for their daughter/mother/sister/whom-ever, I’m just a softie. I have a hard time mouthing that word, “N-O” because I want to help them out, so I have W-A-Y over-booked. I normally do 3-4 quilts in a week. With a partial week off on Thanksgiving that means I have about 4 work-weeks. Do the math… 6 quilts a week. AAACCCKKK! Why am I sitting here when I have quilts to do??!!!

Because I am worn out after spending 3 solid days on a custom quilt, and tomorrow I will put its “twin” in the machine and do the exact same stitching again. Hopefully this one will go faster because I have already figured out the quilting designs and can just stitch it in. Number 1 turned out much better than I had visualized, and that is what makes all the extra work worth it. As usual I greatly underestimated how much time it would take, and that threw me even further behind on the quilt schedule. Thankfully most of my customers want a pantograph!

This is not whining… this is explaining. You won’t be seeing/reading much from me until after Christmas. Or…

Maybe later… I start work on 2 wholecloth show quilts right after Christmas, so it might be February before I come up for air.

And, before I go here are the promised RETREAT PHOTOS.

Daughter Jennifer came to visit and got fabric for Katie-Bug’s quilt cut out.

Mary Anne finished all of her flowers for her flower garden quilt… now to get them appliqued to the background fabric.

Debbie made great progress on her 4-Patch Posey quilt, and had all blocks made by the end of the weekend, despite sewing machine difficulties. She also worked on hand-piecing an Apple Core quilt.

And my surprise Christmas gift quilt was pieced. I LOVE how it looks! Now to get the borders on and find time to quilt and bind it before Christmas Eve!

So that’s the whole scoop… Keep posting and I’ll check in as often as I can.

Kat