During 2007 generous members of the Quilt Studio webring answered the call to help complete
40 Quilts for the webring's service project. Due to the diligent work of those involved, all 40 quilts were completed & sent to either hospitals for kids, a VA hospital for female soldiers or the various hospitals for male soldiers sponsored by the Quilts of Valor. It was a wonderful project that worked well with the various talents our webring quilters offered. You can read about the project and view quilts made by using the label:
40 Quilt Service Project.
It's now time for the quilters of Quilt Studio to come together for another worthwhile project. This year it is my hope that we can make 10 quilts for the Montgomery County Women's Shelter in The Woodlands, TX. Here's a little bit of history and the reason for my Call to Quilt:
Recently I had the opportunity to visit with the counselor of one of the local high schools. She runs a teen pregnancy program and I volunteered to make a baby quilt for each girl in the program. I had also thought about making each mother a quilt but the counselor was not interested in that idea. I had friends who had already sent quilt tops in various stages of completion and I wanted to finish them and distribute them to those women who needed them. I discovered that my community has an"undisclosed location" shelter for women fleeing from abusive relationships. While in the shelter they take classes to improve their situations and to prepare themselves for an independent life from their abusers.
When I talked to the United Way counselor who heads the program about offering the quilts to these ladies when they leave the shelter and she was very excited about the idea. Since talking with her, I bought a 15-18 yard bundle of finely woven and finished decorator fabric for $5! My first thought was to offer it as the basis for this Quilts for Women Challenge. I envision it being used as backing, borders and in some portions of the interior of the quilt (hence the 10 quilt idea).
Generally, I expect we could work as thus:
- Quilters could team up to make quilt tops
- I and some of the other machine quilters in the webring could machine quilt the tops
- I could bind them and deliver them to the shelter
My expectation is that some members will want to
- donate fabrics for the patchwork blocks
- sew patchwork blocks
- assemble the tops
- do all of the above
When we worked on the 40 Quilt Service project, I was able to coordinate everyone's interest so no one had an overabundance of work on any one quilt. I would do the same here. Because these women are moving out of the shelter into small apartments or rental houses, they need bedding. I would propose that the quilts be at least a twin size (which we can handle with borders).
For a timeframe, I am suggesting:
- we get partners during the last few weeks of Feb
- make blocks & assemble tops during March and April
- get the tops to me by the first of June
- machine quilt during June and July
- deliver quilts in August
I currently have about 6 quilt tops I will be adding to these quilts and will begin quilting the ones I have in March. I can add any quilts done through this challenge at any time. So, if someone(s) can get tops made sooner than the timeframe, that's great! The shelter houses 60 women daily so there is always a need.
Here are pictures of the fabric we will be working with (for the first 10 quilts):
The background is a rich navy blue, the poppies are more of a greyed turquiose than the slate blue they show here, the hydrangeas are rust and the other flowers are all a yellowy beige, the leaves are both olive and blue green. The copyright on the selvedge is 1979 so think those colorways when trying to interpret the colors. It's really a lovely fabric (as vintage fabric goes) and I think it would interpret well in many quilting genres from oriental to civil war. I can also send a swatch to anyone interested but I would hope you could "jump off" with enough freedom that you wouldn't need to be matchy-matchy. Please keep the designs simple too!
