Bemused, Boggled, and Bedazzled

There is a twice a year quilt show in my town. It lasts only a weekend, and is on the smallish side, as quilt shows go. This morning there were 71 quilts to be seen. Out in the competitive quilt show world, these quilts will never get a ribbon, never cause anyone to gasp over their astonishing technical prowess, never make anyone decide to take a class to learn how to do it. But they are the most beautiful quilts I see all year.

Every Thursday, a group of women, mostly aged 60+, meet at Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland, WA to make these marvelous quilts. They are double bed size, made of 12″ squares of an amazing variety of fabrics, all of which are donated. Anyone who walks in the room is given a task. If they don’t know how to run a sewing machine, they can measure and cut squares. If they are limber enough, they can work on tieing the quilts with colorful yarns.

When the quilts are finished, they are hung over the pews in the church sanctuary for one weekend so everyone can see them, lean back on them during the services, and enjoy their bright colors. Next week, they will be shipped to Lutheran World Relief to be distributed anywhere in the world where people need a little comfort and cheer. They will end up on the ground, hanging from trees, wrapped around several shivering children and maybe a pet or two. They will be used up until they are nothing but tatters. But the love will remain.

If quilt shows gave out ribbons for quilts with heart, every one of these quilts would have big fancy rosettes on them.

Now the quilters are out of fabric. And they want to get back to sewing on Thursday. I’m going through my stash tomorrow afternoon and will take some over for them. If you are doing some studio cleaning this spring, and would like to consider supporting these women in their work, please contact me and I will give you the shipping information. Quilters are the most generous people in the world, and so I thank you in advance for doing what you can.

Hugs, my little chickadees!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 1:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.