You girls are doing a great job, thank you so much.

Patti

Katiezquiltz wrote:

Thanks, dear friend Katie. Your patience will be greatly appreciated . A Texas sized hug is being sent your way!

I'd like to give my thanks to all the people that helped with the sort. Just the small exchange I was in at one of the shops here was crazy, can't imagine your.

Thanks again
Nan Fell (aka Charm)

You are truly amazing women. I wait patiently for my package.
Katie Gomez Ashland OR

Another point to Clara's post about asking if your package has been mailed yet...I promise, we will mail them out as they are completed, but we WILL NOT be keeping track of the packages that have been returned. If you sent HSTs and a return envelope (with sufficent postage) or charged on Paypal, you will get it back eventually. The sorting process was absolutely unbelievable and monumental, even getting everything unloaded out of our vans and into the church hall, as all theTQS helpers who were there can attest to. My main focus, other than my day job which I still have to do, for the next few weeks, yes probably weeks, will be getting them mailed back to you. Probably no quilting projects in my future for a while .

Also, because of the massive numbers of HSTs, you may be short a few or may have a few extras. If you do come up a little short, we apologize, but we will not have any extras to send to you as replacements. If you're over, consider yourself lucky and enjoy the extras. There was absolutely no way to make this a fool-proof operation.

Most assuredly you will receive duplicate HSTs from one or more members or even some of your own, you had to have been there to understand why that would happen. It was absolutely impossible to handle each HST as its own individual unit and make sure that on one received more than one from each member.

My incredible Bee (most of whom are NOT TQS members) will be helping me with more sorting tomorrow and we should be able to get quite a few more packages in the mail after that, but not ALL of them. It's not just a matter of counting the correct numbers of HSTs, it's also a matter of putting them back into the return evelopes (many of which were too actually small for the return quantities), getting them taped, and then taking them to the post office to mail. I was hoping to get the larger counts finished first, but that was not to be, so the majority of the packages left to distribute are the large counts, 700, 616, even 300s, etc. which will obviously take the most time and manpower.

Several members sent in packages for multiple members together on one envelope that were were all to be returned in one envelope. That only worked to confuse the sorting process so we had to adjust. When you get those back, it will be a total of the HSTs you sent and they will not be packaged individually, so you can have fun going through them with each other and taking turns picking out the ones you want.

There are also quite a few that were pressed open...those were equally distributed amongst all the others, so you'll have those in your mix too. I believe we successfully fumigated the 'smoker' HSTs, so hopefully you won't even notice if you receive one of those. TQS member DebbieK, who came to help me a couple of weeks before the sorting took those 'smoker' HSTs home and pressed them (because of using the Febreze and putting them in the dryer with dryer sheets, they did tend to curl up). There are also quite a few members who didn't write anything on there HSTs so you'd know where they came from...so you can be creative in your own mind and imagine they came from some far away exotic location !

Since Clara has all the Paypal funds, she will be taking the International packages back home with her to finish sorting and mailing.

It was a fun ride, but it's not over yet..in fact, it's probably only about half-way there. Your patience and understanding will be greatly appreciated. Please remember that everything that was done for this exchange was on a volunteer basis including all of our wonderful helpers on sorting day.

To All of our TQS Helpers: A great big thank you and huge hugs to the TQS members for helping yesterday, and especially for those who drove from as far as San Antonio, Fredericksburg, Vernon, Spring...did I miss any other cities?? We couldn't have done it without you and I hope everyone else will appreciate you as much as we did. I was hoping to have the chance to visit with each of you more than I did yesterday, but there was just too much on our plates to make that happen. I am hopeful that we will all get to see each other again at Quilt Festival in the fall....if we can get a reunion together at the TQS booth. Keep the cute namebadges that DebbieK made for you and wear them for the reunion so everyone else who is there can also say thanks.

TQS member, NancyW, made 30 wonderful tissues holders so I could hand them out to all of our helpers yesterday. Everyone was thrilled with them and so appreciative of the time you spent on them. Nancy even overnighted them through UPS so they would get here in time for Sorting Day.

And to all of you who sent CHOCOLATES...you can bet your bottom dollar that every bit of chocolate was thoroughly enjoyed!

And, Rosemary, what can we say but 'WOW' for the job you did on our Sorting Hats. Clara and my DH both took pictures, so we'll be posting more soon.

Josew wrote:

We won't be closing the Chapter 2 thread for a while, if ever...just keep checking both Forums for updates from members. Feel free to copy & past your comments from one post to the other. I'll continue to make updates on the 1st Forum post on both for a while, so please refer to that post on a regular basis. I will eventually move only to the Chapter 3 thread and follow everyone from there.

Besides, we've overshot the page numbers from Chapter 1

Rosemary

How about we start a thread for Sottts bios.? and anyone else who didn't manage to get Sottted.

We can close this chapter if we are talking about sorting.... Clara

I second that emotion o- o- o- o- m - O - m -o- -o- o- o- o

I have already visited Chapter 3 but we can't close this chapter until the wind blows our way but I feel a big wind blowing beautiful HST's around. I did get Good Vibrations today and it wasn't the Beach Boys so I think they may have been coming from Texas and swirling all over the world. This has been an incredible journey meeting so many wonderful people from all over the world. Maryjo

sforster395 wrote:
Thanks Shirley, I totally agree with everything you have said and love the way you said it. We now have to just wait with bated breath for the postman to come with our special packages, can't wait.

Hello Fellow Quilters,
I have been putting this off because I wanted to upload a profile pic but have a new computer with no pictures downloaded yet. Oh, well. I am Laurie Gauthier aka LucyLacy. I live in Green Bay, WI, USA. Not exactly a football fan but how can you not be a Packer fan the year they win the super bowl.
I have 5 children, 5 grandchildren and another on the way. I started quilting when my youngest son went to kindergarten. A friend asked me to help with a project to raise money at church and I have been hooked ever since. I started sewing at a young age, making clothes for my barbie dolls and bought my first sewing machine with money from my high school graduation. I make some clothes, made all the bridesmaid dresses for my daughters wedding a couple years ago, but mostly just quilts and bags. I have a TinLizzie so do all my own quilting plus some for others. My first entry in our local quilt show was a memory quilt I made for my mother-in-laws 80th birthday and got a 1st place. It is twin size but she wanted it hung on the wall in her tiny apartment so that she could see all the pictures and signatures and show it off to all the other ladies in her apartment building. I am mostly self-taught. I've taken a couple of classes but I like to take a pattern/idea and put my own twist on it.
It has been a blast reading about all of you! And I can't wait to get my hsts. I bought Edyta Sitar's Friendship Triangles book, not sure yet which one I will make.
A big thank you to all who are helping with the sorting!

I'm thinkin there's sorting going on
I'm thinkin chocolate eating too
I'm, looking for a green sticker
red yellow or orange also will do.....

Patti
(it's becoming a sickness, this song writing lol)
P.S Shirley I love those!

Hi, Maureen in Scotland, it is a pleasure to meet you and be quilt sisters in the SoTTT! WOW! This is quite a diverse, large, online group of women and men from all over the world with unlimited special talents and interests...and clothed in an outrageous collective sense of humor! We are many common threads that have been woven into a beautiful composite quilt by sharing "our" stories hundreds of times throughout Chapters 1, 2, and now in #3 of this friendship exchange. It's like being invited to an extraordinary global quilters' tea party and drinking cups of creativi-tea, serendipi-tea, sinceri-tea, generosi-tea, and hospitali-tea! Thank you each and every one of you for a marvelous quilting experience! (Hmmm, I think I just got another idea for a wall hanging!)

And, to Rosemary, take 2 smiles every hour, snuggle under a warm, cozy quilt, and dream quilty dreams! Hope you're feeling better real soon...you have quilts to finish!

Shirley
Gresham, OR