Events and Service Projects

Monthly Quilting Bee Location
Every 3rd Thursday of the month from 10AM to 1PM 
Habitat for Humanity
9110 Gaither Road
Come for Fun, Conversation and Quilting! See you there!

Next Quilting Bees:

Bring your own project, help other with theirs, or just come and chat for a while as you wish. Those who want to, can also join the lunch party after the meeting.

QUILTING FOR OTHERS: THE SISTERHOOD
Hi Beth,

Our Sewing Guild did several Lap Quilts and wheel chair Tote Bags for the James A. Haley VA Hospital here in Tampa.
We've also done about 30 Pillowcases for the kids at Ronald McDonald House - and have completed 25 Quilts for the kids at All Children's Hospital (those receiving chemo get very cold during their treatment, so half will go there) and the other half to Shriners Childrens Hospital here in Tampa. Pretty good for a group of about 22 active members.
We completed over 200 Pillows for Breast Cancer Patients that were given to the American Cancer Society.
Can you tell I'm the proud Charity Coordinator for our group?
Jo Ann

The above is forum posting that I received from another charity quilting chairperson. I try to keep up on several quilting forums on the Internet, and this note is typical of the ones I receive. As you can see, they are doing many of the same kinds of charity quilting as Nimble Fingers, proving once again that quilters are people with heart.

At the Habitat Bee in June we cut out over 30 pillowcases and made them into kits for our members. I will have some at the September and October guild meetings. The kits include fabric and instructions. The pillowcases take about 15 or 20 minutes to make and they’re so easy you might consider making some of your own to give as gifts. Before you give Sandra Chin your finished pillowcase, please be sure to wash the pillowcase and put it in a plastic sandwich size bag.

Nimble Fingers and Riderwood quilters will make a total of 12 quilts for the houses that Habitat is rehabilitating in 2009. That’s just one quilt per household. Riderwood quilters are a much smaller group and they asked Molly Martin, the Habitat Volunteer Coordinator, if that was OK. So Molly divided the total by 2 and each group is making 6 quilts. If you signed on already to make a Habitat Quilt, please continue on it because we will donate any leftovers to another group. Some are due as early as October. If anyone is really disappointed over this and would like to see us make more, I will talk to Molly about it to see what can be done. (See followup note below.)

I’ve also been in touch with the quilters from Mother Seton Parish in Germantown this summer. They collect and distribute for the Quilts of Valor project, which provides wounded veterans at Walter Reed with quilts. The Quilts of Valor don’t have to have a patriotic theme, I’m told, but probably should be more masculine-looking because most of the recipients are men. If anyone is interested in making a Quilt of Valor, the Mother Seton quilters will be happy to pick it up and deliver it to the hospital. Email them at wecare@mspquiltingangels.org

Please don’t forget: If you took a fabric kit at the May meeting when I was passing them out, your quilt top should be turned in no later than the December Quilt-In. I will take any that are finished earlier than that whenever it’s convenient for you to give it to me. If you would like to use the kit as the basis for a Habitat quilt, I need those in October or November.

In July, the guild received a donation of vintage household linens, a large coverlet, women’s lingerie and sleepwear. Much of it is beautifully embroidered and lace-trimmed. Here’s the story behind the donation as supplied by the donor, Blanca Poteat:
Here's a little more information about the possible origin of the linens, laces, and trapunto-style bed cover. Maybe this will help track it's quality and age.

My mother's mother, from whose "hope chest" these things came, was Blanca Crooswijk. She was born in 1882 in the Netherlands, either in Rotterdam in the family's "town" house or in Lochem in their other home. The family was associated with a brewery/distillery in Dordrecht "until someone burned it down" (per my mother). She attended a "school for ladies" (as my mother calls it), where she learned sewing, French and music. At 18 she married J. Beijerman. They had two children but the family and the marriage were stormy. It's not clear how much of her family money/dowery she was allowed to retain when their marriage was annulled (husbands had rights to their wives' money then), though she probably kept most of her remaining hope chest and family linens. The children were required to stay with their father's family for most of their upbringing, a separation that was very hard for her. She married my mother's father, Willem van de Wall, a musician and music therapist/educator, who also had two children, with a Russian woman. They raised these two sons and had two daughters, Blanca and Wilhelmina (Minny) van de Wall, my mother.

So Rotterdam, Lochem and Dordrecht are the main family locations in Holland.

Thanks again for your interest in these old fabrics and linens and for giving them new life. Please keep me posted as you and other Nimble Fingers friends learn more about them.

I plan to make these linens available to guild members at an upcoming Open House and will price them according to similar items I’ve found on Ebay and Etsy. Some would be wonderful for theater groups or organizations that do historical re-enactments. Some are stained, so might be cut up for incorporation into quilt blocks. The work on them is very high quality, and the fabrics are as well or they wouldn’t have survived all this time.

Many thanks to Betty Walker, Bea Goodman, Hilary Hastie, Shirley Malia, Floris Flam, Morna McEver-Golletz, Beatrice Stack, Marlene Gaunaurd, Helene Bress, Francie Parrack and Yoko Sawanobori (who cut miles of Fay Goldey’s fabric into squares and strips) for generous fabric or batting donations. If I have forgotten anyone, I apologize and will put your donation in the next newsletter if you send me a reminder. Remember, donations are now tax-deductible and must be 100% quilting weight cotton (see exception below.) I am finding that deco fabric and other similar heavier fabrics just don’t work for the quilts we make for charity as they make the quilts too heavy. Cotton/poly fabric can be used for pillowcases, however and right now I am in need of solid color fabrics for pillowcases. Please call me if you wish to make a donation.

Note on Habitat Quilts: I met with Molly Martin on Thursday, August 20th to discuss the limit of 12 quilts that they have decided on for Nimble Fingers and Riderwood. Some NF members have expressed their disappointment to me, so I wanted to talk it over with Molly and get a better idea as to why this decision was made. I also asked the NF Board of Directors to discuss this at their meeting in August, and my understanding is that the Board prefers to do as Habitat suggests rather than insisting on making more quilts than we have been asked to make. As Molly explained to me, since Habitat is rehabbing homes in Montgomery County this year instead of building new ones, there is a logistical problem with delivery of the quilts. In early 2009, Molly told me, she had a very difficult time distributing the quilts as the homeowners could not always come and get them during office hours, and delivery of one or two quilts at a time to the homes was not feasible for her or for other Habitat employees. I mentioned the possibility of our making more quilts after the fact and giving them out as they were completed, but Molly asked us not to do that. I think we should honor their wishes.

Quilt Restorer Wanted
From time to time I get requests to do restoration work on an old quilt. I don't do this, and don't want to learn how. If anyone would like to do restoration work, give me a call.
Judy Lundberg

Dinner Guests Wanted!
We are lucky to have such wonderful speakers join us each month to lecture and conduct workshops. One of the pleasures for them and us is to share time together. In the past, we've tried to take the guest out to dinner with a group of guild members. If you would like to join us in the future, please send Morna an email (morna@professionalquilter.com) or call her. About a week before each meeting, she'll contact a group of members and see if they can arrange to get together for dinner with our speaker. Thanks.

Morna