Sunday, November 1, 2009

Learning to Quilt - Blanket Project Phase 2

Early last summer, the MOMS Club of Camas, WA began phase 2 of the Remembering Rowan Blanket Project. One Friday night, the lovely ladies of the Clark County Quilter's Outreach Program brought their talents and tools to a local church. They provided everything including patterns, sewing machines, irons, rulers and cutting tools. All we had to bring was our donated fabric and ourselves. They taught us a simple "Windows" pattern which started with 9 12"x12" squares.
During the course of just one night, 6 of our MOMS Club members to made 9 simple quilt blocks, which we could then sew into small baby quilts for our next blanket donation. Some of these newbie quilters had never even sewn on a machine before, and yet we all were able to get our blocks sewn together.
We continued working on our quilts once a week throughout the summer. We had a fun weekly playgroup, working on our quilts and drinking mochas while our kids played in the sprinklers, fed the neighbors chickens, and picked our blueberry bushes clean. Our kids had so much fun together that we often found ourselves quilting and hanging out from 10am to about 3pm.
Due to the fact that 1 of our group moved away and 3 of us are pregnant, we did not quite finish our dozen or so quilts in time to donate on Rowan's Birthday in August. But it has been a great project which has inspired me to start a Monthly Craft Club for all my crafty mom friends, as well as Phase 3 of our Blanket Project: No Sew Fleece Blankets starting this month!