Blogger's Quilt Festival! A Whole Lot of Good Wishes....

Hi, all!

Well, it's that time of year again - International Quilt Market (which most of us can't go to) and the Blogger's Quilt Festival, which most of us can participate in!!  Woohoo!!  Huge thanks to Amy of Amy's Creative Side for hosting this Festival twice a year - it's an enormous amount of work for her, but so much fun to participate in!

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To tell the story of this quilt, I first have to tell you the story of its recipient.  

Christy joined our quilting group last summer.  She had never sewed before, but wanted to learn. A couple of lessons in, and she was coming to the church on Fridays to sew in the new Sweatshop (our fond name for our dedicated sewing space!).  She started out with a major project, and with very little help from any of us, put together this pretty quilt...

...and then moved on to making baby quilts for the quilt ministry.  She pulled many sets of fabrics for baby quilt kits, and made about six tops like this one...

...and this one.

Then, last October, we received a prayer message that said that Christy was being life-flighted to a local hospital after a seizure.  It turned out that she had suffered a brain aneurysm and was being kept sedated while they tried to determine how best to treat her.

Springing into action, e-mails started flying trying to determine the best quilt we could make quickly for her.  We decided to use Beth's "dump-and-sew" technique so that everyone could make blocks out of their own scraps and bring the blocks in to church that week.  

This block was made by Deb and her young daughter Katy Beth.  Katy Beth was bringing Deb pieces of fabric to use, and when she brought the Disney princess, Deb reminded her the quilt was for a grown-up lady.  Katy Beth replied, "Well, isn't she a princess, too?"  Deb had to agree with that, so the Disney princess remained...

You might recognize the monkey and plaid fabric in the center of this block - they are also featured in one of the baby quilts that Christy made, shown above.

       

These two blocks are personal favorites of mine - the red and white strip in the first is a scrap of a dress I made for my daughter for her eighth birthday (about 20 years ago), and the black and white check with red hearts in the second is a scrap from a dress I made my oldest granddaughter for Valentine's Day the year she was two.

The block on the right was made by a visitor to our group on the night we assembled this quilt.  It was the very first thing she ever sewed!

The block on the left is part of a group of paper-pieced blocks donated by Sharon of Vrooman's Quilts.  We decided that they would be perfect for this quilt, and worked them into several blocks across the quilt....

Many of these blocks have pieces of quilts we've made for the ministry - so many memories contained in one quilt!

And then a reminder for Christy, written on one of the blocks...

Unfortunately, while Christy survived the brain aneurysm and many surgeries and procedures, she will probably never recover enough to rejoin us and begin quilting again.  But she made a profound impact on our group and will always remain in our prayers!

Specs on this quilt:

Finished size:  60" x 80"

Improv piecing - Dump and Sew technique 

Pieced by the ladies of Piece*Love*Quilt,

the quilt ministry of Gladeville Baptist Church,

Gladeville, Tennessee

Quilted by Sarah Craig on Jolene,

her Artistic 26 long arm machine

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Thanks for sticking with me and reading through such a long post!  If this is your first time visiting my blog, I hope you'll come back again!  I do a lot of charity quilting through my church's quilt ministry, and right now I'm hosting the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge 2013 here on the blog.  There's also a linky party each Friday so you can get a Whoop Whoop! for your week's accomplishments.  Come join us!!

Hugs!

Sarah