Saturday, November 9, 2013

Comfort and Joy

Christmas Day might be 6 weeks away, but today St Mark’s Quilters held our final workshop for the year and celebrated our 4th year of quiltmaking together with a break-up Christmas lunch in the garden.

IMG_3044

We began the year making quilts for the folk of Dunalley in Tasmania who had lost their homes in the January bushfires, then went on, over the following months, to make dozens of Blankets of Love for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and child-sized quilts for “The Marcia” kindy for autistic children at Liverpool.

Sadly we’ve ended the year once again working on quilts for victims of disastrous bushfires, this time closer to home in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains. That’s the harsh reality of summer here in Australia. And the season has hardly begun.

As soon as Di B and I read Tracey’s appeal to quilters for assistance in giving every school aged child a quilt, as well as an extra quilt for every household, we knew we wanted to get on board to make her vision a reality in the new year.

We emailed our quilters the instructions for a very simple double square block and asked them to raid their stashes, if they wanted to help, and bring along as many completed blocks as they could today. These were to be the building blocks for our quilts for Winmalee.

Those girls are wonderful. They brought along more than a hundred blocks!

IMG_3071

After a day of crawling on the floor to arrange and rearrange blocks into child-sized and adult-sized quilts, we have around 8 finished quilt tops – and rather a lot of homework to do quilting them!IMG_3042

The blocks were numbered with masking tape and stacked together in order, making it possible for many hands to work together stitching them into quilts.

IMG_3055

IMG_3056

We have quilts in reserve (we like to keep some for emergencies), so along with these we’re confident we’ll be able to make a decent contribution to this heartwarming effort by the wider quilting community.

IMG_7219

Lunch in the garden was a fun affair, with delicious food contributed by everyone.

IMG_3080

Once again we thanked God for giving us a passion for creating quilts, a gift we all love using to give comfort to people in need of encouragement and hope.

IMG_3081

There were paper hats (no photos!) and Christmas earrings.IMG_3084

And the usual show and tell.

IMG_3038

Another Blanket of Love by Margaret

And these colourful kiddies’ quilts…

IMG_3064

Barb

 

IMG_3067

Gail

 

IMG_3068

Di C

 

IMG_3069

Michaela

 

IMG_3070

Moo

 

IMG_7215

Gillian

 

IMG_7217

Michaela

Michelle worked on the binding of a beautiful quilt she’s made for the newborn  daughter of an Iranian refugee couple in her church.

IMG_7221

1930s fabrics, large quilting stitches and knots give this quilt real vintage charm, and I know it’s going to be treasured.

IMG_7223

Gillian has finally finished a real labour of love, two storybook quilts for her granddaughters.

IMG_3029

I could suggest you play “spot the differences” and there are quite a few, but both are enchanting, with sparkle and quirkiness, and all the traditional elements of a fairytale – a king and queen (complete with golden crowns), a handsome prince and a frog who might be a prince in disguise, a beautiful princess, a rather friendly looking dragon, and a snow white unicorn.

IMG_3030

Finally, if you’ve made it this far I’ll leave you with a little bit of silliness, a collage of some of the bags people brought today. They just made me smile Smile

Bags

Red roseDi

7 comments:

  1. looks like you all had an enjoyable day together and got a lot done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not only did I get goosebumps when I read your post, but my eyes welled up with tears. Bravo to you ladies! Love those bags!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, you all achieved a lot......and had a fun day too! Now let me guess, the pink bag is yours.......?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wonderful pics Di - what a lot of fun you have when you're with stitching friends. I meet monthly with a group and over the years we've gone far beyond mere friendship and are surely family now. blessings, marlene

    ReplyDelete
  5. Such a worthwhile cause and fabulous team effort. hats off to all of you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your quilters are so dependable! Amazing too, that they could produce 100 blocks just like that, and turn out eight quilt tops. I'm tickled to see how you marked blocks for putting together later. :-) Great! Every finish is wonderful, and I'm happy you had a celebration. You are a blessed group, and are a great blessing to others.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Our quilting group, working in conjunction with the Salvation Army people, have given away over 100 quilts to children from pre-schoolers to high school students in the last couple of weeks. Many of the quilts were donated to us either completed or as flimsies. Crafters are so generously, aren't they?

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear from you, so please leave me a comment.