Quilt for MCC

My mother in law and I created a pieced king size quilt top this summer while we were visiting them. I was just going through photographs and came across these photos of the process. We visited family in Northern Indiana in July and whenever I’m there my Mother-in-law and I like to embark on some interesting sewing project. We’ve talked for some time about doing a quilt for the annual Mennonite Relief Sale in Northern Indiana. This is an annual event where lots of quilts are auctioned off to raise money to support the relief work of Mennonite Central Committee around the world. My MIL and I had talked about this a time or two and I told her I’d help if she ever decided to do one. So a long time ago she mentioned that quilts with lots of contrast go higher in the bidding. So when we went fabric shopping we came home with bright pink, pastel pink and black and white. The fabric stayed at her house for a long time. So while we were there in July 08 we brought out the fabric and got started, not knowing whether or not we'd be able to finish in the time we had.

Our tradition is that I cut and design while she sews. And if we have a third person to iron and keep the pieces coming back to me then we can really put together a complicated quilt pretty quickly in our little assembly line. I don’t think we had anyone ironing so she and I took turns. So these photos are from her home.

The kitchen table becomes grand central station for cutting and designing. (And hoping there is enough fabric!)
So we started by making some pinwheels. I laid them out to decide which ones we wanted in the middle of the quilt. I was going for a traditional Amish quilt design with the diagonal block in the middle. Here is my Mother in law ironing.
So I chose the black and white ones for the stronger statement in the middle.

Then we added a border around the middle block that made it fit to the needed size for the square line of pinwheels. We then added in the triangles.

And then the squared off border of pinwheels.

Then we put another border around it with pinwheels in the corners.

It really was a nice touch. By this time the quilt is king size (more by accident than design) so it was pretty hard to get good photos of a quilt that size in the living room.



The ladies of East Goshen Mennonite congregation will quilt this quilt top and hopefully have it ready in time for the sale this year in September. I really am looking forward to hearing what it sells for at auction. Every penny of the proceeds will benefit the Mennonite Central Committee which is an excellent international relief agency. Check out their site for some of the opportunities to give now, the need in Gaza is especially great at this time. My father-in-law worked with MCC a while back to clean and rebuild after Katrina for a number of months. And the money raised from the sale of this quilt will go to exactly this kind of service work. We also loved this idea at MCC, Relief kits for families in war torn Iraq and my family enjoyed this as a service project this year at Christmas. I do hope to get a photo of it completed with all the quilting. I really hope to get a good photograph of it, quilted or not. It's a big one but it went quickly and will quilt up beautifully.