So much going on

Hello all~

I made a delivery of 33 blankets to St Peters Pediatrics this evening. They had a 2-year old little girl they were going to find a special one for. It always surprises me how one thing can be so wonderful and so sad at the same time.

My Sweet Baboo is on his way to Illinois to pick up a trailer-load of free batting from The Warm & Natural Company. What a guy... offering to drive 1500 miles (one way!) for quilt batting. They don't come any better than that. Warm & Natural made a wonderful, huge donation to Project Linus, but it was all delivered to our HQ office. He has gone to pick up what he can for ours and surrounding chapters.

PL Conference/Institute was more than I can write about. I took classes from Gina Halladay and Patricia Pepe. I had the opportunity to visit at length with Patricia at dinner one night - she is truly a wonderful lady. The class with Gina was a giant log cabin block. Patricia's class used her X-blocks. This was incredible to me. I had tried the X-blocks before, and it turned out disastrous. Her classes made the X-block inviting again. There were a couple of other classes I took from local instructors that were great as well.

We had, I think it was the vice president, of Avlyn Fabrics speak one evening, and the chapter coordinators all got samples of their Komfort Kids fabric created with Patrick Lose specifically for Project Linus. It is bright and wonderful!! I loved hearing about their business philosophy. Fons and Porter is sponsoring a quilt contest with the fabric! Entries are due around Sept 1, I think. I've given a flyer about the fabric to the owners of several quilt shops around the state (at the Great Falls Quilt Guild show), so I'm hoping you'll be able to find some of the fabric locally soon. If you can't find any, send me an email...GreatFalls.MT@projectlinus.org

We also had Kirk Weisler speak. He has become one of my favorite motivational speakers! Mark Hyland from Handiquilter was also there. He has become a wonderful friend to Project Linus! It was truly just a wonderful 5 days, and I have so many new ideas for things our chapter can do as a result!!!

Welcome!

Hello everyone and welcome to the new blog for the Great Falls (and Helena) chapter of Project Linus!! Anyone who has ever done a newsletter knows how time consuming it can be to work up the layout, design, etc., etc. While I love doing all that (really, I do!), there just isn't always enough time... and by the time I actually do have time, the info I want to include may be old. Web pages are a bit better but still take some time. Blogs are, well... faster! I can just go in, type up any news, any time, and those who follow the blog will have the latest information almost as soon as I have it.

So, I'm here at the 2009 PL conference, and this year they had a booth encouraging (even helping us) set up a blog. This is the result... or the beginnings of it for our chapter. I will post a link to it on the chapter website soon. Let me know what you think... the goal is for this to be useful to YOU!!

Have a great weekend!!
gina