This began in December, just when everyone is itching for yet another project! I had been serving as an Activity Day leader with Kara, and we traded off teaching the bi-monthly lessons. This means, of course, that each of us took a turn teaching the six girls in the group once a month, attending and supporting the other during her turn.
For this project, I assembled eight quilt kits. These included fifteen pre-stitched blocks, half of which were intentionally designed with clear spaces in the centers for the girls to write kind messages to one another. Kara helped me with the last of these, and by the December activity the blocks and the backings for each quilt were ready for the girls to choose from. We made eight so each girl would have choices!
Only four of the girls would attend. The other two have never yet seen their quilts; one of them moved away shortly thereafter. Each girl selected one or two colors of Sharpie that coordinated with her quilt kit and wrote her name on one of her blocks, then we rotated around the room to write our observations of the good qualities of the other girls on one of each girl's quilt blocks. Surprisingly, this took a long time. We had had a short opening exercise and we had a story afterwards, and we went over the hour that is allotted for our activities.
The following month's activity was a success. We set up five sewing machines and worked with the girls as they organized their blocks into rows and stitched them together. This was a new experience for each of the three girls who attended. One girl, whose older sister is taking a sewing class at school, was enthusiastic about her progress and continued to remark on how much fun she was having and how good she was at sewing. She begged to continue working on into the night! Another girl, who had literally been dragged to the activity by her friend and who refused to participate until the others were engrossed in their own work, seemed very frustrated as she worked to arrange the blocks. She was unable to get any sewing done before the time ran out. Yet, the following day, she reported to another friend (with an unheeded injunction "not to tell" the first friend) that she had had a great time! You never know.
During the course of February, I tried unsuccessfully to get each of these three girls over to my house to work with them on the stitching. We decided to postpone tying the quilts until March's activity to allow them time to finish sewing the blocks together. I used my February lesson to teach about modesty and personal style and image instead.
As the March activity approached, the quilts were not any more complete than they had been two months before. Aunt Elizabeth's gift complete, I dragged out all of the parts to this project and gave them a temporary home on the parlor floor. It was overwhelming, particularly since I had sick children. I cut out strips for all of the borders, then tackled the sewing. When Kara called with an offer to help, I confess I felt badly about it, but I accepted her kind assistance. As she assembled three quilt tops, I finished the rest with a light heart and a glimmer of hope for the end of the project.
By this time, our leaders had decided to change the program and had released us from this assignment, so tying these quilts was to be our last activity with the girls. The project turned out to have been ideally timed, as it provided an opportunity for the girls to work with their old leaders and their new ones, offering needed continuity. Additionally, the two extra quilts were required after all: another girl moved into the neighborhood, and the birthday of a younger girl moved her into the group! There was something for everyone.
Were the quilts completed? According to the rules of this project, Yes. Ends of two of them had to be stitched during the activity (while everyone was busily tying the two we sent home with their owners), but they were bound and are in the possession of the new leaders. Two of my daughters attended the activity with us and added extra pairs of hands to the labor. They also took photographs that day, to document the design and the activity.
The rest is a bit of a frustration about this blogging business: I have tried three times before now to document this activity, and have had difficulties editing posts. My computer died during my last attempt to insert photographs into the last set of text (which I have had to delete and write again), so we have been (and continue to be) without one. And all of those pictures? They shall have to be included another day, when we find a solution to the problem.
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