Charity Sew Day Report

by Deborah

BA Modern Quilt Guild held its first Charity Sew Day on Saturday the 16th at the Los Altos library. Guild members showed up with their machines and sunny dispositions to work on projects for local charitable organizations.  With the promise of klippies, bell ringing and adulation for finished blocks and projects, enthusiastic charity sewers got down to business.  

The activities started somewhat promptly at 10:15am.  With fabric generously donated by Pat Bravo and team at Art Gallery Fabrics, as well as our own Julie Dueck of Intrepid Thread, the Art Gallery Fabric Block Challenge began.  Quilters were given a brief tutorial on how to create Ninepatch Remix blocks, then let loose on stacks of pre-cut 5” charms and scraps.  

Amanda won her choice of a trio of fat eighths for first block completed.  Within an hour there were enough blocks to assemble the first quilt top of the day:

With a second quilt top completed by the end of the day:



With 59 blocks total completed, the Art Gallery Fabric Challenge will yield 5 quilts!  

The next challenge was making cat beds for a no-kill cat shelter in San Mateo.  Again, after a brief tutorial, charity sewers chose from a stack of cat bed kits and went to work.  Once the beds were sewn and turned out, they were stuffed with bits and bobs Amanda had been hoarding from the cutting room floor of fellow guild members.  

The last challenge of the day was the Orphan Block Challenge.  A bin of orphan blocks and a bin of fabric donated by guild members was set on a table.  The challenge- dig through both and come up with a pleasing combination to assemble into crib-size quilts.  The result:  4 completed tops and 3 WIP’s taken home to be finished.

Kits were also provided to make this quarter’s charity block- string blocks, with a total of 35 completed by day’s end.

To close out Charity Sew Day, klippies were tallied to determine the winner of a copy of An Apple A Day (autographed by Julie Dueck, who has a pattern published in the book) and a trio of fat quarters from the Apple of My Eye collection, all by Quilted Fish.  And the winner was... ding! ding! ding! Rhonda.


 
The first BA Modern Quilt Guild Charity Sew Day was a huge success.  The final count at the end of the day: 6 quilt tops, 11 cat beds, and 94 blocks!  Many thanks to all who showed up and sewed their Saturday away!