I love these ladies!!

Hello, all!!

Well, today I've been trying to get ready for Saturday, when fifteen to twenty fellow sewers will be meeting at my house to make quilts to donate to children. This is a great group of ladies - we started meeting last August, just once a month, to learn to sew. Turned out to be a wide variety of skill levels, but everyone wanted to meet and socialize and trade skills and ideas. I'm fortunate to go to a church where we are encouraged to meet together for all types of purposes, not just Bible study, so it's a varied group - stay at home moms, working grandmothers and moms, home-schooling moms, older women, younger women, some who have sewn for years and others who are just now learning. We have a great time!

I have to say, these ladies have certainly inspired me to explore new areas of sewing - trying to find projects that will fit all the members of the group can be challenging, but it's always fun! I've discovered lots of new magazines on the market that are loaded with great ideas; I've also discovered the blogging world, where people share their inspirations all the time! We don't just make quilts - we've made purses, children's dresses, shopping bags, crayon roll-ups, napkins, all kinds of stuff! (We also did a very special project that I may tell you about on a future blog.)



And if you need inspiration to start sewing, I would recommend that you check out the website www.quiltsforkids.org. This is a great organization that solicits donations of fabric from manufacturers to be turned into quilts that are donated to children in hospitals, battered women's shelters, and the like. If you volunteer to sew, they will actually send you a kit for a quilt (for free!) that contains all the pieces, already cut, for the front and back of the quilt. All you need to do is sew it up, provide the batting for the middle of the quilt, finish the quilt and ship it back to them (at your expense). They specifically request that all sewing be done by machine, so that the quilt will hold up to hospital washing machines, so you don't have to worry about not knowing how to hand quilt. The quilt kits are fairly simple to sew, so you don't have to be a long-time sewer to make one. (That's a picture of a quilt made from their kit to the right.) And if, like me, your family gets tired of home-made gifts after a while, it gives you an outlet for your vice!!

Later!!

Sarah