A Sunday of Quilts

I spent much of yesterday working on quilting projects for Lutheran World Relief.  I was alternately content, frustrated, annoyed--well, every emotion really.

The quilts for LWR have to be close to the size that they request.  I measure and measure and cut carefully and still, somehow, the quilt tops and backs need to be adjusted.  So I got to church, thinking we were ready to go, and we had to add some cloth to the tops and backs.

We made several quilt tops back in June at Vacation Bible School.  The kids drew on them with fabric markers, and their work displays a lot of variety:

Now we need to attach quilt tops to batting and backs.  We do this by knotting.  Last year, we got a whole quilt knotted.  This year, only half.

As we knotted, I wondered about the recipients of the quilts.  Will they understand that children drew the pictures on the quilt tops?  I had a vision of someone saying, "I will never go to the U.S.  Those people are crazy--look what they drew."

The hands make sense, but then the kids drew other things:  mythical creatures, earth moving vehicles, swirls that don't seem to correspond to anything in real life--you know, the way kids draw.

Yesterday the kids didn't seem to recognize the quilt tops.  They weren't interested in knotting.  No, they took the straight pins out of the quilt-to-be and rearranged them.  They put them in the pincushion in interesting ways.  They asked why we couldn't have done this in VBS.

Amazingly, no one pricked themselves.

Finally, we came home. We had 2 quilt tops made of patches that were almost done.  We decided that while we had the sewing machine out, we should get those done.  And so, we did.

Now to get it all made into quilts--we have 4 tops, a quilt from last year that needs to have the borders finished, and the quilt that is half knotted.

Each February, LWR sends a truck to pick up quilts and mission kits (sewing, school, and health kits), as they are expensive to mail.  Perhaps we can get everything done by then.

I'm so glad to be part of a church that does these kinds of events (see yesterday's blog post for more details on the God's Work, Our Hands day at our church and at many Lutheran churches).  Part of me wants to do them more often, but part of me is exhausted when the day is done, so I'm glad that we don't do it every week.