I’ve written about my quilting sister, Tess, many times. She is our guild’s Challenge Queen, Ribbon Queen, and Creative Genius of Quilting. She has motivated all of us to be better at what we are doing, to try new things, and to enjoy the act of quiltmaking.
After coming up with twenty-five glorious ideas for our guild’s challenges, she has decided to retire from that role. Her shoes are unfillable – not that her feet are big – but her store of ideas and her sense of humor that has led to such interesting titles for our challenges will be a hard act to follow.
Not only have her titles and descriptions been interesting, the ribbons she makes for the winners are always perfect. Take for example, the ones above for our most recent Something Feathered challenge. And here are a couple of others:
At the conclusion of most recent meeting, our president presented Queen Tess with a quilt made by guild members to show her our appreciation for all her hard work. The quilt has 25 blocks, one representing each of the challenges led by Tess. As she viewed the quilt, Tess could immediately recognize some of the challenges and she was heard to exclaim, “oh, that’s the Brown Bag challenge”, and “I remember baskets, and log cabins, and oh, there’s the fans!”
The label on the back memorializes her status as Queen Tess. I didn’t get a photo, but the label is in the shape of a crown.
I’m not sure what that next act will be…our guild is yet to decide. Will we continue the annual challenge? Will we have one leader? Will we rotate the leadership about the guild? Will a committee determine the challenge each year? Will the winner of one year decide on the challenge for the next?
In the absence of a volunteer in the immediate future (at a time when the guild wasn’t meeting because of Covid), I agreed to plan the challenge for 2021. That doesn’t mean I’m locked into it forever…all the aforementioned possibilities need to be considered. But doing it once shows me how challenging it is to think of everything to plan a challenge…to get the details right, to communicate it to all, and to inspire people to participate. Really, it’s more fun to participate in making a quilt following Tess’s guidelines. But, I do understand that she’s ready to sit back and watch…and make the quilt that takes home the blue ribbon – without having had to make the ribbons.
A few days ago, I crashed a party. We were on a backroads jaunt and I remembered that some of my friends were attending a quilting retreat at a nearby wildlife refuge. I asked Jim to make a stop and let me say Hello. He asked, “Can you just pop in? Were you invited? “ I assured him, “It will be fine. They won’t mind. They will all be happy to show me their projects.”
Angie was piecing some animals. Mary was working with baskets. Jean had stars on her design wall. She had discovered that her alternate blocks were cut from directional fabric, unnoticed until they were put on the wall. She had lots of advisors to help her decide how to deal with this dilemma.
Joyce had two big appliqué projects: a Baltimore Album that just needs a few details and a border attached, and a fabulous Kim McLean pattern all with big pieces of Kaffe fabrics. Joyce is one of our guild’s charter members and she still produces more quilts than several of the rest of us combined! She was sitting beside Hilda, her BFF for more than FIFTY years. They have worked on many projects and been to many retreats and heard many stories in that time, don’t you know?
Dewey was there with his longarm machine and an eight-foot table. He had already quilted two quilts at the retreat for other participants and was doodling on his machine while he waited for others to get backs prepared for him to quilt their tops.
Here is Donna working on a One-Block Wonder. And Dewey had just finished the quilting on her Friendship Garden before the retreat. Now she can add the binding and label and it’s done!
Mary had run to the store, but her work-in-progress is here. Mary is the organizer of this event. Someone has to take charge and she does it well! She reserves the space, organizes the guest list, plans the food, and assures that everyone has fun. And she is successful, because these people plan their calendars around Mary’s retreat dates. Because of her, the sisterhood thrives.
Lynn was putting the finishing touches on a garden scene, while Eleanor was working on a batik project complete with labels to insure that every block ended up in exactly the right place.