Emily's Project

When the girls were young they spent their summer vacations here and we played between my quilting jobs.  As children interested in what any adult is doing, they wanted to learn to sew.  I taught several young ones how to make quilts and Emily and Laura were quick learners.

By the tender age of 6 Emily was seated at a sewing machine with the pedal on a stool so she could reach it.  Laura followed the summer after with the same setup. 

By age 7 both girls had sewn at least 3 quilts each and when they got tall enough I let them quilt the quilts they made on my longarm.

I do a lot of charity quilts and often they ask to quilt and a charity quilt goes on the frame and they feel good doing a good deed for someone in need.

Emily is a senior now and one of her classes is community service oriented.  She visits an elementary school two times a week during her school day and she helps the teacher with 2^nd graders.  

The youngsters think she is an old lady and she enjoys helping them.  Talking with her about her experiences is very enlightening.  She fields difficult questions at times and answers them with maturity and wisdom.

She took my book of 1000 quilt blocks in to them one day with the idea of showing them the varied types of quilt blocks and is having each child in the class design their own block.  Emily has taken on a huge task of building the blocks each child designs and will turn all of the blocks into a quilt.  I’m not quite sure what will become of the quilt after she is finished but she tells them about making quilts for charity.  I think this may go into the charity pile.  

The blocks on paper are colored in by each child who designs it.  Emily asked me recently how she should go about resizing the ones that won’t fit nicely into her 9” block scheme when they are specifically 8” as drawn.  We solved that by her adding a border to the finished block.

She spent this past weekend building the first 4 blocks of the 23 that she expects from her students.  One in particular is very intricate and the finished block is quite stunning.  She spent the entire weekend sewing the four blocks pictured, saving the hardest for last.  I’m very impressed with the precision she has achieved on this very noble project she has undertaken.

We talked about how to make the different units and I explained how much extra fabric it takes for a half square triangle block and the hour glass blocks.  She went away with her verbal instructions and came back with 4 very beautiful blocks.