24 August 2009

Iowa State Fair Sew-In

Daughter participated in a great project at the Iowa State Fair this past weekend: a "sew- in" to make quilts for kids at the University of Iowa hospitals and those with parents in the prison system. The project was coordinated by a local quilting group and was considerably more successful than planned: The group had hoped to make 50 quilts but by the end of the fair, more than 130 had been sewn!

Unlike her mother, Daughter sews very well, thanks to her grandma's sound instruction over the years. Grandma would have been very proud to see her sewing this quilt from start to finish in just about three hours.

When my dad and I popped in to check on her during the sewing project, the quilting ladies promptly put us both to work pinning and unpinning quilts! They instinctively knew not to put me anywhere NEAR a sewing machine!


Daughter wanted to make a rainbow-colored quilt (no surprise there!) so she picked out fun fabrics in those colors. She stitched the 12 strips together, then pinned the layers together (front, batting, and back).


She sewed along the "gutters" between each strip of fabric, stitching the back to the front with a large zigzag quilting stitch.

Then she added a colorful border around the edges.

And the quilt was done!

We all thought this was a pretty neat way to spend an afternoon at the fair. :-)

8 comments:

Connie said...

I see some influence from her mother there, with the ROY G BIV color scheme going on! Very cool way to spend the day! I'm sure the quilt will be greatly appreciated.

Janet said...

Connie, hard to believe but she's even more ROYGBIV than I am!

Maureen said...

Awesome! What a great job!!! My mom made quilts too (she hasn't done one in years) and taught my daughter to sew. What a great cause!

toners said...

Oh, what beautiful work! I love it! I'm going to show it to Nattie :)

Hey Janet, I was looking for an email address for you - can you drop me a note at toners@wispertel.net - I have a question for you!

Judy said...

The quilt turned out awesome. It also looked like she was truly enjoying what she was doing. What a great cause. Thanks for sharing.

Katie said...

All I can say is that is so amazingly cool in so many different ways. She is one fabulous young lady!

Kristina said...

Beautiful quilt! She did an awesome job. My mother was a quilt and cross stitch ribbon winner for many years before she passed away. You should see some of the things that she made for me.

Cheri said...

That is a WAY cool thing to do, whether at the fair or not! I need to check this out if they do it again. Her quilt is awesome!