After the success of the our first ladies quilting bee, the ladies at church asked for another one. I decided to take a slightly different approach this time. We asked each of the ladies to bring a cut of fabric to share (and some snacks). Once there, we spent a few minutes at the beginning brainstorming an organizing concept. I came prepared with some pre-cut and -colored paper half-square triangles for the ladies to play with.
We divided into teams – a design team, a cutting team, a sewing team, an ironing team, and the runners. Designers arranged the pattern and then decided where each block went once it was sewn. The cutters first cut the fabric swaths into pieces and then later trimmed the squares as they were sewn together. The sewers, of course, were stationed at the machines — we had four or five machines going at any one time. The ironers ironed open the seams of each block as it came off a machine. And the runners had the hardest job of all — take the pieces from the cutters to the designers (who also pinned), to the sewers, to the ironers, back to the designers, back to the sewers, back to the ironers and occasionally to the cutters — until every last piece was together. We had around 17 or 18 ladies helping on this project. The youngest was ten. Piecing the top took about 4 hours one Saturday afternoon.
Once the top was pieced, I took it home and quilted it. This was again fairly challenging. The biggest struggle with a group quilt project is the fact that not everyone maintains the same 1/4 inch seam allowance. There are many interpretations of a 1/4 inch which means blocks that should be the same, simply aren’t Since very few of the points line up, I needed to quilt it in a way that wouldn’t draw attention to the uneven lines. I went with a meandering wave pattern.
We gave it to a family who was getting ready to move to North Carolina.
Creative Joy 