Benefit Gifts

   

       We still have rural elementary schools here in Mid-Missouri.  Before you form a picture of a one room schoolhouse with a potbelly stove, let me set you straight.  They are modern buildings with several classrooms, a library and a gymnasium and provide the area with a pre-school, kindergarten, and grades 1-8.  The class size will be less than 10 usually and might serve two grades.  Our local school has a very active parents organization with a traditional fall fundraiser, a dinner and some type of auction.  I was invited to donate a quilt for the auction this year and gladly agreed.  I invited one of the organizers into my sewing room to choose a quilt from the "pile", both quilted and unquilted.  She chose two to consider, a traditionally pieced one in fall colors and a simply pieced Missouri Star Quilt Company pattern in yellow and pale gray.  The rest of her committee was younger women with school age children and they overwhelmingly chose the more modern one.  Here it is after quilting;

A vintage quilt was gifted to me by a friend cleaning out her deceased mother's sewing supplies after her passing.  It was a lovely top of Nosegay blocks, all made with feedsack prints.  I was able to find that odd shade of green to make a border and binding, then quilted it.  I know, if I was a purist I would have hand quilted it, but it had laid unquilted for 50-75 years, so I decided done was better than perfect.  I am donating it to our historic preservation organization for their house tour and silent auction this fall.  Here it is:

I enjoy donating quilts to good causes and it seems I do more of that kind of quilting than I do for us. I think I've made just two or three this year that I intend to keep.  That's probably enough!

Judy