When I thought about the advantages of moving back to our Lutheridge house and doing seminary classes from a distance, the chance to be part of the Lutheran Church of the Nativity's quilt group was one of them. This group meets every Wednesday to make quilts for Lutheran World Relief. This year, we made 128 quilts, and today they will be blessed during worship.
All of the fabric is donated. Often it's donated when a quilter dies and the family doesn't know what to do with all the accumulated fabric. As a result, we've got amazing fabric to work with. We've even inherited some partially finished projects that we incorporate. On days when there hasn't been a free sewing machine for me to use or a quilt to knot, I've enjoyed going through the boxes and pulling out fabrics that go together.
One woman has transformed her basement into a quilting studio, and she does a lot of the work of assembling the tops throughout the week. Others of us have other commitments, like work and family and other charity groups. Two of our members also create quilts for the Project Linus group that gives quilts to children in hospitals. That group has much stricter requirements, like all the fabric has to be new, so much of the work of the Wednesday quilters wouldn't be able to be donated there.
We meet most Wednesdays, but there have been stretches when so many of us were out of town and/or with other commitments, so we decided not to meet. But usually, we sit and sew for an hour or two or three every Wednesday. Some weeks, only two of us meet. Some weeks, we have eight or ten.
It's amazing what we can accomplish if we just sit down and do it. And it's not just the quilts we make. We've shared highs and lows, and gotten to know each other better. We've helped the family of Afghan refugees living in the parsonage feel welcome and learn a bit of English. We've created quilts that will go around the world to provide comfort. All this, for just an hour or two a week. It's a larger life lesson, I know.
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