marciacp

I kind of know Barbara Winkler - I am a member
of the QOV Mystery Group and she had inquired
about my patriotic sampler pattern "America Still
Shines" to purchase for her group to make. So,
I sent her an e-mail and she sent back a long reply.
It really helped answer a lot of the questions people
have been discussing. I just wrote her back and asked
if I could post some of her reply on here and I'm waiting
to hear back. If she gives me permission, I think it
will be of value because it is 'straight from the horse's
mouth', so to speak. I'll post again when I get her
reply.
Have a Blessed Day!

Sadiemae

I would love to know how she is doing.

barbcatw

Well, I am the Enough Already show participant. I see there has been alot of chatter about the show. When they were planning the show, the contacted the Army and the American Legion I belong to as they wanted to do a program about someone serving in the military. They were thinking maybe about preparing a home for the return of someone deployed or getting a home ready before someone deployed. Instead they got ME! One of the stipulations was the location for the shoot had to be less than 30 miles from the production studio--I was 29.6!!
We had company over for my husbands birthday the end of May and the show was shot in July. The fabric was organized in my living room, but we had just returned from a show and workshop and had lots of unsorted things kind of dumped in there. We did cut and sew on my dinding room table and we did iron in front of the china cabinet as ther was space for half a dozen or so of us at a time. It is a really big room!
As for the new garage/sewing room. It has some good and some bad points. It does get dusty, but most of the fabric is in tubs. I did set up a computer at the shipping station so I can log the quilts in and out. I have bought a tv and radio, but it still needs to be 'installed'. The electrical leaves something to be desired--and the show electricians were just here yesterday to do an estimate and see if the show will pay to fix it or not.
When they talked about the garage holding 110 bins, they only gave me 80 or so giving me room to grow. Some of those BINS were actually shoe boxes...go figure the terminology. The big bins with the backing fabric were too heavy to move, so all had to be replaced with smalled tubs. And their tubs had no handle to grab onto and the lids flipped off too easy. Even though my fabric 'stash' for Quilts of Valor had been sorted by color and size, it all got mixes, so had to be taken out of the tubs and remeasured and re-sorted. Time wasting, but necessary!
Since Peter and his staff were not quilters, they did not know how to arrange a lot of things. The rulers were put way over on the wall, not near the cutting table. They took the big mat that fits on my high cutting table and cut a notch out for my sewing machine....not out of the metric side, of course--it was out of the inches side. My big rotary mats won;t fit on any shelf and would have worked fine on the table, cause when you're sewing, you can't be cutting at the same place!
Unfortunately, it doesn't look the same now because we have projects in the works. And, the end of Jan we did a sew day at the local high school. They completed 40 quilts with blocks that were made by quilters and donated. Since it takes about 5 yards for each back (including pillowcase and binding) we used 200 yards that day. IT GOES FAST!!
Bottom line, I had to put turbines on the roof to suck out the heat, still need fans and space heaters to regulate the temperature. We are looking into insulating the big garage door for some relief, but this is all at MY expense. Don had to pay $3,000 to build a shed in the backyard for the gardening, sporting goods and tools. You never saw the trucks remove things from my place like the opther shows, nor were we offered a chance to have a garage sale. A lot of things disappeared that were supposed to be saved. We have NO luggage at all among other things.
We got a 1099 for the show and now we OWE taxes--several thousand dollars--last year we owed NONE! The living/dining room look lovely and we did have 24 here for Christmas, but not many other visits from family. They all have scouts, ball games, etc plus friends parties to attend, so they don't have much time to come to visit anyway.

Sadiemae

Welcome!!! Thanks so much for joining us. I am sorry everything wasn't as peachy as they presented on tv, but I am not surprised. After all, it was a way for them to advertise their show. They succeeded in getting people to talk about it.

illinois

Thank you for sharing with all of us. As suspected, only a quilter can understand how a room should be arranged/constructed. While it sounds nice to have such an intervention, the old adage still stands--all that glitters is not gold! There were lots of complications that went along with the show coming into your home. Bless you and your friends for your project for Quilts of Valor. I hope the program gave others a desire for becoming involved in this endeavor.

Stitchnripper

Thank you Barbcatw for sharing your experiences. And thanks for the work you do on QOV.