At the May Ladies auxiliary meeting we voted to give Fr. Jarek a monetary going away gift, which Marilyn gave to him that night. At that time he expressed a desire for the ladies to make him a quilt, with a patriotic fabric theme. So Marilyn called me the next day and I was thrilled. I had thought about giving him a quilt but had no idea what colors he might like. I said I thought it would be great if the ladies would sew blocks and i could put it all together and quilt it. I said I'd design something and make block kits to distribute on May 14th at the regular quilting day. I picked 2 background fabrics from my stash and found 17 red and 18 blue fabrics to make 35 star blocks. The block design kept star points well away from the edge of the blocks, so all blocks could be trimmed to the same size. With so many different seamstresses, some of whom had never made a quilt block, I didn't expect them all to come back the same size. On the 12th I handed out block kits and demonstrated the sewing of the block. Amazingly I had all of the completed blocks back in my hands by May 25th, which is really pretty amazing if you have ever done a group quilt. Meanwhile I ordered backing, border and sashing fabrics which arrived before I had the completed blocks. I trimmed all the blocks down to the same 10" size and it was an easy matter to get the top together. I had it done by the weekend. Life was busy so didn't get to put the quilt on the machine until Thursday morning, but quilting was done before I went out for the evening.
I made the binding before bed and sewed it on before taking the girls swimsuit shopping on Friday. After a successful shopping trip, I decided to go ahead and use the leftover fabrics to make a small doggie quilt for Father Jarek's dog. I had a piece of extremely high loft batting and I think it will make a nice place for Phillip (the dog) to nap.
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