October Quilting~Alzheimer’s Quilts~ Birthdays and Batiks!

Well….it looks like a mess, (I guess it was!), but we were sewing little Alzheimer’s quilts again this month for our monthly service project. Our monthly quilting group, informally named ‘Loose Tensions’ (referring to sewing machine ‘thread nests’ and our place to reduce ‘stress tensions’ once a month, or to ‘let loose!’) met yesterday. Oh, we always have such a good time! We started making little quilts last month with a couple bags of scraps, and this month when we cleaned up, we had more than what we started with! We felt like they multiplied right before our eyes! (A BIG Thank you to the Park View quilting ladies for saving their scraps for us!) You can see with the smiles on Renea’s and Patty’s faces that we were having a good time. This also was one of the last photos I took, and cleanup had already started, so this is what we had left at the end!

Ronelle brought her own fabric strips, as she had a special person in mind for her little quilt. It turned out beautiful!

Leslie and Margaret in deep concentration…

KT (Katherine T) was working hard while Christie (right) stopped by for a short time to visit. She has been mending from back surgery so didn’t join us today, but did stop by to visit and to bring us more SCRAPS! Diane, on the left, also made a surprise visit to see us. She has recently retired, and it was her job that I am now doing at work in the office. She dropped by to bring me a birthday gift and to visit us all. When we started our quilt group in 2000, she was one of the first of us, but life got busy for her and she left us. Now that she is retired, we are trying to get her to rejoin, but an occasional visit is all she will promise right now….maybe someday.

Here are some of the fruits of our labor. This one was mine.

I don’t know who did the one on the left, but the brown one was Kate’s. 

Also not sure here, but I think the one in the front is KT’s…..(KT?)

Not sure about the one on the left…Margaret’s maybe? I think Renea did the one on the right. Correct me girls!

Ronelle’s finished one.

Patty’s???

October also meant birthdays for Renea and I. After the cleanup, here were my gifts. We love birthdays at quilting!

Patty was our winner of the draw for choice of fabrics, and she chose Batiks. Aren’t they all just beautiful?????

Before Diane and Christie left, I requested a group photo. All of us worked together at The CB Company. In the photo, is Patty, me, Diane, Margaret and Christie. Margaret started in December of 1978. Christie and I started on the same day in February of 1979, Diane started in April of 1979, and I don’t know the year Patty started, but she has also worked with us for many years. The company has been renamed, bought and sold many times, and now, it is called Dynamic Tube. Christie left us after about 4 years, and changed careers, but the rest of us I’m afraid are/were ‘lifers.’’ Christie and I became close friends right away and that friendship has lasted. She is the one responsible for our little quilting group’s birth. I believe our group is something that will keep us all joined together for many years to come….and when we get too old to remember each other, we will become NEW friends!!!

It was a great day, as usual, and at the end of the day, I again, thanked God for such wonderful friends.