Charity Quilts

As I've said before, I am chair of the Charity Quilts committee in my guild. It's fun and frustrating all at the same time.

The fun part is the treasure hunt in the charity quilts stash. We have a ton of fabric, lots of crochet thread for tying, some notions, and a few quilt kits. Some of this fabric is high quality. Lots of it is unknown quality, some is crap.  It is semi-organized by color and fabric type. Some of it is very old. When you search through a box, you never know what you're going to find.

The frustrating part is managing how much fabric there is and developing ways to get people to use it on charity projects. Additionally, no one seems to like to quilt these projects - that's the bottleneck. We can get people to make blocks, make tops, and bind quilts. We have a backlog of about 50 tops with backs that are ready to be quilted.

I'm trying to organize some projects out of the gigantic stash.

I have a committee who helps me with the organization and putting projects together. However, what this group really needs is vision, direction, and motivation. That's me.

Yesterday, my bee members came over and helped organize the stash, as much as we could in two hours. We got so much done! Yet, at the same time, it was frustrating because no one wanted to throw out anything. Lots of statements like:

• "Oh, you could use this in a nine-patch!"
• "You could fussy cut this little piece."
• "This would be a nice Amish quilt."
• "Oh, don't break up that collection of fabrics! It could be such a nice quilt!"

Then they lovingly place it back in the box. Well....? Who could make that nine-patch? Who could communicate the vision? Who could design a quilt that uses the fussy cut blocks?

The implication is that I'll do it. Well...? Phooey! I'm going to work on the projects I want to work on because there are too many projects in the stash for one person to organize. It was a little annoying to have them return the burden all back on me and suggest that I'm not efficient or creative enough to come up with a project for every little scrap.

I know, that's not really what they were saying. They weren't wrong in their suggestions, just not supportive of my point of view. We have too much fabric to handle in a practical way, we don't have a good method for organizing and storing it, and we don't have enough labor to use it efficiently.

Some of these fabrics have copyright dates in the 1990s and earlier!! One kit was a shop-hop project from 2000. If no one has touched it in 10 years, then I think it needs to be broken up and added into the stash, not be kept together as a kit. And it's easy for them to say keep it when 20-30 boxes are not in their houses.

OK, I've had my rant. As long as I'm strong in my viewpoint, I'll be fine, and I will definitely have some fun with this office.

I have made a mystery quilt project and a fun Curious George project. There are copious strippy piece blocks to be made. Yesterday, we picked out 7 quilts worth of yardage to give to a Girl Scout who is doing a quilt related Gold Award project. Last night I found a collection of 10 inch squares - "Layer Cake" size! New project!!

This office appeals to the quilt designer in me. Let's see what I can come up with!