On Sunday at our monthly GCMQG meeting, I was thrilled to show off a completed charity quilt top! This is our first year as a guild and first year working on a charity quilt as part of the annual QuiltCon Charity Quilt challenge.
I was so impressed by the number and variety of charity quilts on display at QuiltCon in Pasadena last February. With their consistent size and color scheme, and the way they were displayed up and down the halls of the convention center, they really made a huge impact and I knew immediately that I wanted to make sure our guild participated as soon as we could.
We started the process back in August, and I volunteered to lead the effort. The design is based on our guild logo (which you can see as the profile pic on our IG account if you follow that link). I sketched it up in Illustrator to determine all the dimensions needed, and then had guild members sign up to make 7.5″ unfinished blocks! We used colored fabrics from the prescribed color palette to make the wave blocks, and each one features tiny piecing in some way, which was the other part of the challenge. We had a few people make neutral tiny pieced blocks to work into the background as well!
Once all the blocks were in, we had a sew day in November where another member and I finished off the curved blocks while several other members working on piecing the rows together. The sashing between each block and row measures 1″ finished.
We got most of the rows completed that day, and over the last few weeks I was able to finish the last couple rows and piece each one together into a completed quilt top! After we all oohed and aahed over it on Sunday, another member took it with her for some longarm quilting. I can’t wait to see how it turns out! In January we’ll pass it off to yet another member for binding and a hanging sleeve.
This has been my first time working on a group quilt, and first time leading that kind of effort too. Here are a few things I learned:
- Some people will underestimate their skill level. Other people will overestimate their skill level. And other people will accurately assess their skill level. As a result, some blocks will have seams with funky tension issues. Some blocks won’t lie flat. And some blocks will be totally perfect!
- You will probably need an experienced volunteer prepared to do any “fixing” or “fudging” that will inevitably be required when you have multiple people of varying skill levels participating. This takes more time, but I think it’s important to do whatever you can to use each and every block that is contributed!
- No matter how clearly you think you stated the directions and parameters, some people will misunderstand and/or misinterpret the needed block size, or the color palette, or the deadline.
- Because of all the things mentioned above, flexibility is KEY.
- In retrospect, I realized that a simpler design — instead of a grid that required a decent amount of precision — may have been a better choice for our first charity quilt undertaking.
- However, the fact that we left the individual block design up to the quilter instead of dictating a particular pattern turned out to be a good call! People who weren’t as strong at perfect accuracy could make fun improv blocks that could then be trimmed to the exact size we needed, while people who love pristine points could also make that happen.
Overall, organizing and participating in this effort has been a really wonderful and rewarding experience, and I can’t wait to see our finished quilt!
p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blog writing challenge!
Letting each participant decide what to piece for their block was a really fun idea and I am sure will make them excited to see and point out their work in the finished quilt.