Charming Girls Quilt Club

I know it's been a few weeks since I posted anything. I still can't get the photos from the Knoxville Quilt Show to upload from my new camera, and my trip to Florida was great.

I know I sound like I'm in a hurry, and I guess I am.
See, I joined a club called the Charming Girls' Quilt Club in hopes of making some new blogging friends, and getting some projects finished. You can read about it here. Today is the deadline for posting the projects that I would like to finish for August.

Ever since I came back from Florida, life has been crazy. Just to give you an idea of my crazy week, yesterday at Quilt Guild we were in lock down because a heavily armed gunman was in the parking lot of the church where we meet. See, the night before, a gun shop was robbed and over $30,000 worth of assault weapons and amunition were stolen. During our guild meeting police officers pulled a car over during a routine traffic stop, and one of the guys bolted out of the car and ran into the parking lot of the church where we meet. Beside the parking lot is a huge corn field.

I was in the middle of issuing a challenge to my guild called Finish It Up. I'm really wanting to finish my many UFO's and I thought it would be fun if the ladies in my Guild joined me. We're having a quilt show at the end of June, and now is the time to start finishing projects to display in the show. Just when I was almost finished pepping them up for finishing things up, the Vice President said, "Amanda. I need to interrupt you. There's an emergency." So, I thought someone fell or something. You can't imagine the horror I felt as she stood there and told us about the gunman, all of the police officers surrounding the building, and the attack dogs searching for the guy.

For several hours we were in lockdown. Helicopters were flying over and you could see snipers ready to shoot with their guns. It was an scary experince, but you know all 75 of us did really well. It's too bad it wasn't a workshop day where we would have our sewing machines or handwork. Instead, people visited, shelled peas (yes, shelled peas. I guess someone had a lot of peas to share from their garden and brought them to Guild to share.), and looked at books that people had ordered from our book order lady. It really was nice to visit with everyone.

At one point, though, hunger pains started to set in. Several of the ladies are diabetic or they need food with their medication, so some of the ladies that go to church there raided the cabinets and freezer and found hot dogs, barbeque meat, buns, peanut butter, crakers, chips, and gold fish. They had enough food to feed all 75 of us. It reminded me of when Jesus fed the crowd with the fishes (goldfish crackers) and the loaves (hot dog and hamburger buns)!

We were on lockdown for about 4 hours. The guy was found in the cornfield. He gave himself up. The police were able to talk to him on his cell phone and talk him into coming out. He left the bag with the guns and amunition in the cornfield, though, so hopefully they'll find that soon. I'm just glad no one was hurt.

So, back to the Charming Girls Quilt Club. Today is the day I'm supposed to post the projects that I would like to get finished in August.

This quilt is called Happy Hour by Terry Atkinson.

I won the fabrics from Sharon almost 2 years ago. I started the quilt last fall and never finished it. I have 36 of the blocks made. All I need to do is square those babies up, and sew them into rows. There's no border, so it shouldn't take long to finish this one up and get Terry to quilt it for me.

I have always loved this quilt from Thimbleberries.

I bought the book and fabric for my birthday in 2005. Last year I cut it out and started sewing on it when I was at a quilting retreat. Every thing is organized and ready to be sewn.
I am going on a week long retreat in a week or so, so hopefully I will get these quilts done plus a few more.

If you would like to be a part of a "Finish It In August", Kim at Kim's Big Quilting Adventure is finishing projects and clearing out her patterns with giveaways. You can join in on the fun, too.

I wonder if there's an acronym for catching up on blogging. I have a lot of that to do, too!

Have a great weekend!

Amanda