Every year, we have a girls' sewing weekend. It started small, 10 years ago, when Mom and I wanted to make lap quilts for ourselves. We decided to make one for Sis, too. We had a little extra fabric and had recently read about Project Linus, so we made two small quilts that went to them, also.
The next year, we decided to get together with the specific goal of making Project Linus quilts. Soon, Sis joined the team as our official tie-er (and thank goodness because she is awesome and fast and neither Mom nor I particularly like to do the tie-ing). The first year she came along to tie, we didn't have anything ready for her to work on until about halfway through the weekend, because we were trying to do each step for all the quilts at once. She can be a real PITA when she is bored (love ya Sis!) so I started making some tops ahead of time so she would have something to work on, and we also changed our assembly strategy to try to get one of this year's quilts done sooner.
Somewhere we have a total of how many quilts we've made - will have to hunt that down tomorrow. But over the years, we can probably count at least 70 and maybe quite a few more.
Most years we buy fabric specifically for that year's quilt design and try to make about 4 or 5 that are sewn and tied as part of the weekend. A few years, including this year, we've worked with something from my stash.
We're slowly getting L and D more involved, too. It's fun to have them be a part of things, though it is nice when we just get girl time, too!
This year, Mom and I were able to get started a little earlier than usual and make today pretty productive. We started about 4:30, with time out for dinner and getting the kids to bed and miscellaneous stuff that we needed to do, and I'm feeling very accomplished!
First up - we needed to get accustomed to Mom's new sewing machine. She brought home some pillowcase kits for hospice from her quilt group, so she got that sewn while I worked on getting all of the other supplies out and sorted. One pillowcase, ready to go:
The colors are actually much brighter and pretty, but we were in the middle of turning off lights and it was too dark for my cell phone to work well.
To be ready for tomorrow when Sis can join us, we got three quilts ironed, layered, and pin basted. These are three that I completed before this weekend:
I'll get better pictures of them when they are done being tied - after putting all that work in to get them ironed and laid out I didn't want to pull the pile apart.
Some of this year's quilts will be made from some great bright fabrics I collected. I had already washed, ironed, and done some cutting at home, and let the kids each create a top from squares. So we had a head-start, but it still feels good to have completed one top for this year already:
This was L's design. Originally there was pink where the light aqua stripes are, but he agreed that we could change it when I asked him. I believe "boy" quilts are a little scarcer than "girl" quilts. Even though L really likes pink, I thought this way it would definitely go to a boy. I like how it turned out, though again the colors aren't quite as good as they are in real life.
Mom is the chief iron-er, and she did a huge job already today. In addition to the 3 tops and 3 backs that I showed above, she ironed 2 bindings and enough backing for 5 more quilts! One of those backs is the lighter aqua above, and will be used for that quilt.
Tomorrow, I think the goal for Mom and I will be to piece 3 more tops from the bright fabrics. Two will be disappearing 9-patches, and one that D designed with squares. We will also try to stay on top of trimming and adding the first half of the binding for any that Sis ties - if I leave that all until the last day, it can be a massive job! Here is the start of one of the 9-patches:
It feels so good to be with family and be sewing this weekend! Can't wait to see what I have to report for tomorrow.
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