A Quilt for a Cause

These photos just came from my in-laws. I designed this quilt ages ago, I cut and designed it, my MIL did the sewing, it was hand quilted by the Mennonite women of my MIL's congregation and it will be sold at auction in Sept 2010 to support the work of Mennonite Central Committee. I can't wait to see it in person, but for the moment these photos will have to do. It's king size, four colors. White, light pink, dark pink and black, all commercial cottons, pinwheel pattern.  It's draped over their double bed.

And while I'm at it I'll show the other photos my MIL included. This is a small quilt. I think my husband's grandmother embroidered the blocks (not sure on that) I found some colors in my MIL's fabric stash to make the sashing. My MIL sewed it all together and look how it turned out. There is a photo of her working at the hand quilting, I don't know if this is in progress or if she has finished it.  If it isn't finished, it will be finished soon because she'll be ready to get out in the garden.

 It's fun to see how things turn out when you are part of the team that creates something.  I'm planning on being there in September to see the auction, I've never had a quilt in the auction before and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

On the home front, I continue to improve physically.  I feel stronger each day, I'm off the narcotics and moving around - maybe a tad slowly - but I'm moving.  The parade of food from family and church friends has our fridge full to the gills, I put a bunch of stuff in the freezer this morning because were were running out of room.  It was warm here today and I spent much of the afternoon on the couch with a novel.  Tomorrow?  I want to finish that novel!  Sounds like a GREAT plan!

Happy Creating (or happy novel reading)
-Carmen Rose

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.

King Sized Quilt Top Project

Last week my Mother-in-law and I made a quilt top in two days. It was an easy pattern, large pieces and it went together without giving us any trouble whatsoever. I designed the pattern using an existing block pattern. I wanted to do the traditional Amish diagonal set inside block. It could have been rather difficult but it came together as easy as could be and I was grateful for that. I chose the colors over a year ago when I visited the last time. And the fabric has set in storage this whole time. I made sure to purchase extra at the time because we knew that some of the fabrics were being discontinued. I am certain that there is plenty left over of everything except the white.

We talked about making a quilt for the Mennonite Relief Sale annual auction. Women (that’s an assumption on my part – certainly some men get in on the fun of quilting) from all over the Mennonite (and other) church make quilts to be sold and some fetch quite high prices. We talked at length about what features people really seem to like and the two main things were 1) contrast and 2) lots of quilting and less emphasis on the actual piecing. And we are both big fans of the work of Mennonite Central Committee – their focus is Relief, Development and Peace. See their website for more information: http://mcc.org/ So with these things in mind we started work on this project.

We had already chosen to use the pinwheel as the block. Our next major decision was which blocks would go in the center, we chose the ones with more black and white and I'm happy with this choice.



It is our tradition for me to design and cut the quilt, Sheril to sew, and whoever is available to help - irons. With three people working at these tasks, it doesn't take long to go from fabric to quilt top. As long as the designer/cutter (me) gets her part right. And if I don't get my part right then we end up ripping out seams which is pretty annoying.

Here we laid out the blocks to get a feel for how it was going to work. Thank goodness they have a large living room with carpet because we end up being on the floor alot.

I cut out the triangles for the center diamond while Sheril sewed a border on the central diamond of blocks.



Then we were ready to sew the triangles to the central diamond.

After that Sheril sewed on the next row of blocks while I cut out fabric for the next border.

Sheril sewed on the final border then, and when I walked back in the room there it was with that black and white border on it and I've got to tell ya, that was a sweet moment. It was exactly the right border to bring it all together and I was really ticked pink with it at that point.



Since it's a King sized quilt, it's hard to get it all in the picture when trying to photograph it - even standing on a chair. So here are a few shots of the details.

So this stage of the quilt is complete. Next it will be carefully marked where all the quilting should go. That's tedious but fun. Then it will go to the women of Sheril's church who will lay it out very carefully in a frame. They will start with a backing fabric, followed by a layer of polyester quilt backing. This top will be stretched out over this and fastened carefully. The women of the church will gather round to hand quilt each part of this quilt, rolling the quilt up as they go. When the quilting is finished, it will come off the frame and be bound with a black binding. I'm really looking forward to seeing it after it has gone through all that. There are many hours of labor that go into a project like this. I'm sure everyone who is involved hopes that it fetches a really high price at auction. Because it's all for an excellent cause.