Loving Hands Quilt Guild

Our church in New Berlin, WI, has a quilt mission as part of the Women's Mission groups.  As my co-leaders Suzi always says, we're "small but mighty".  We have about six or seven core members, and sometimes we pull in other people for a project here or there.

We always have a bag of quilt kits in our resource center, but sometimes our 'parts department' gets a little low.  We love making string blocks, and putting them into quilts, but we stopped making them for a while so we ran out.

This year we wanted to spend a day sewing together, and it seemed like getting some string blocks done would be a good project for all skill levels. You know what string blocks are I'm sure... but here's a sample just in case:

I made these 3 1/2 inch blocks of leftover pieces a while back. 
Our blocks at church are usually 9 1/2 inches. 

We had a whole bag of 'strings', which are the cuts that are left over when you make a project.  Sometimes they're large and can be used again in a quilt, and sometimes the pieces are short but can be sewn together and used, and sometimes you wonder why you didn't throw them away to begin with!

Suzi brought her bucket of strings too, and that turned out to be a BIG pile of goodness! We ended up with a crew of nine or ten, including one teenager and my own Miss A, who is almost 9.  So we went all the way from 9 to 90+!

We work on foundation blocks, pieces of fabric too light to use in an actual quilt; we had a ton of those precut.  Several of the ladies and the two youngsters had never made a string block before.  It's a good block for beginners to start with because it's so forgiving.  A demo of the process was made and we were off to the races!

At various points during the day we ate, played bingo with quilt words and gave away prizes, then returned to sewing.  By the end of the afternoon we had over 30 blocks, 9 1/2 inches square, sewn, pressed and trimmed to size.  Next time someone is looking for a project, this could be the one they pick up!

Sadly I took almost NO pictures during this wonderful day.  Next time, for sure...  A good time was had by all.  I hope we made some new friends, and that they come back again next month.  Our 'parts department' is full again!

Sew on...