I Am Proud To Be A Quilter

I am proud to be a quilter.  We have this opportunity to use our skills to help others. The public is willing to spend money to buy one of our creations to support a cause.
This is not a new phenomenon.  It has been going on for centuries. Dating back to the Civil War, quilts were used to raise funds for the soldiers.  People would pay as much as 10 cents to put their signature on a quilt.  Raffle tickets were then sold to the quilt to raise even more money.

This tradition of creating quilts and selling raffle tickets has continued.  Almost every quilt guild has some type of charity that they support.  The funds usually come from selling tickets for a special raffle quilt that guild members have made.  Women's shelters are one of the most popular types of organizations that guilds like to support with part of the proceeds.

I have been involved in creating quilts to raise funds for some of the local private schools.  These quilts were sold in an auction type setting.  Parents love to bid on things that contain their child's signature.  The quilt included photos of the students and the girls also signed pieces of their jeans that I used for the flower petals.  This quilt brought over $2500 at their annual fundraiser.

Virgina Spiegel took the concept of using quilts to raise funds to a whole new level.  She started Fiberart For A Cause(FFAC) to raise money for The American Cancer Society.  I remember seeing a wall of fiberart postcards being sold at one of the major quilt shows.  You could choose whichever one you wanted  for a donations of $30 each.  After raising over $200,000 (yes $200,000) for The American Cancer Society, FFAC has been retired. Not being able to rest on her laurels, she is hosting a one day event called ONE.  Feb 16th is the date.  You can get more info by clicking  here.

Ami Simms is another woman who has brought quiltmaking to another level as a fundraiser. She started the  Alzheimer's Art Quit Initiaitive (AAQI) to raise funds and awareness.  She says never underestimate the power of a woman and a needle.  Through her organization, more than $400,000 for Alzheimer's research has been raised. 

So what motivated me to write this post?  The horrible floods in Australia has brought out the benevolence of more quilters.  The immediacy of blogging has led some quilters to use their talent and offer some of their creations as a fundraiser to help those that have lost everything, on their blogs.

http://oneshabbychick.typepad.com/one_shabby_chick/2011/01/australia-quilt-auction.html

So where else can you do something that you love so much, in the privacy of your home, sometimes in your pajamas in the middle of the night, creating something that can end up helping so many people?  I am proud to be a quilter.

Try New Things

I like to try new things. It's what makes life interesting. In my quilting, I am never convinced that I know the best way to do things. So I am always game to try something new. I tried a few new things with this current charity project. This is always a good opportunity to try new things.

I discovered a pattern for a scrap quilt on Moda's website (Moda Free Pattern) in January while I was sewing In Key West. I made a scrap quilt from it that I can't share just yet because it's a surprise gift. But I loved this pattern so much. It is a great scrap quilt that is easy to adjust to any size. The pattern called for 2 1/2"x7". I decided to make a Valor Quilt to be donated for injured veterans through my Quilt Guild. I thought this would be an opportunity to use up some of my stash. I increased the size of the rectangles a bit to 3"x8", and cut up most of my red and cream homespuns.

The first step is to sew together 2 of the rectangles.

And then keep adding rectangles - one cream, then one red. I pieced 4 strips this way, until I had 25 rectangles in the strip.

Then I trimmed the edges and the top and the bottom.

I alternated these strips with navy strips onto which I appliqued stars.

To baste the quilt, I decided to try something new. I usually use safety pins for machine quilting. This time I tried using a temporary adhesive (505). I have a love/hate relationship with this spray. It's a messy product - hard to control the overspray. To try and minimize the mess, I hung a bed sheet on my design wall that also covered a part of the floor. Standing upright to spray really did work. First I pinned the backing to the sheet. Sprayed it and smoothed the batting onto it. Then I sprayed the batting and smoothed on the top. Would it stay put while I quilted it? It wasn't that large ( 50"Lx 40"W) so there wouldn't be a lot of squishing it. I was a little skeptical, but tried it anyway.

It worked! No puckers on the back. Success.

I decided to try something different than I usually do for the binding. I wanted to do it entirely by machine. My friend Kelly shared her method with me. I cut my binding 2 1/2" wide. After trimming the excess batting and squaring up the quilt, I sewed on the binding with a 1/4" seam allowance to the BACK of the quilt. I flipped it to the top (where it was a little wider than on the back). And then I actually pinned the binding all the way around, paying extra attention to the corners. Top stitched it. It came out great.

Would I use these 2 new techniques again? I would with some caveats. I would limit the spray basting to quilts that were on the smaller size. And the machine stitched binding? I have another scrap quilt that needs a binding that is a little bigger than twin size. Tomorrow I will try it again. But, maybe not for competition quilts.

Thanks Kelly!

Quilts For Food

Last Saturday was the day that we were sold my quilt guild's challenge quilts. If you read my post from Sept 17th, you'll know the background of the quilts. Just to fill you in a bit, if you haven't read about them, we had a challenge based on food and hunger. Selling of the quilts after they were exhibited was part of the deal. So no one got their quilt back unless they were willing to buy it.

My friend and fellow guild member, Lisa is a frequent visitor to The Growers Market. It is a weekly farmers market in downtown West Chester.There are people selling produce, cheeses, fresh meat, baked goods, flowers, etc. And ever changing live music - Today there were 2 banjo players with a wooden dancing man on a stick, that entertained with delight, the younger crowd. Many people come weekly to make their purchases. You could call them locavores, which is defined as someone who eats food grown or produced locally. These people are passionate about supporting the local farmers and the local economy. Everything looked fresh and beautiful. No pesticides here.

So this was a perfect place to sell our 21 quilts to raise money for the Chester County Food Bank. All of the quilts were 24" square and we priced them all at the same price - $50.00. Lisa had one goal in mind and I had another. It was a little rainy in the morning, so it started out a little slow. Eventually we met her goal. Then we met my goal. We were thrilled. By the end of the day, we blew by both of our goals. We sold half of our quilts and received some cash donations as well. We were ecstatic and are looking forward to giving the food bank $526. They can really use the money. They are in desperate need of food.

There are still quilts for sale. We have one more venue this coming Saturday at Drexel Lodge in Newtown Square, PA. AND we're going to post the remaining quilts on The Calico Cutters Guild website.
If you're interested, check them out.