More Team

I'm stitching down the binding on the Sussex Neighbourhood House Raffle Quilt. Yesterday I picked it up from the office, where my friend V had left it for me. She'd promised to do a bit more quilting after J and I had quilted around the main blocks and L had stitched in the diagonals. I was so thrilled to find she'd done this: There's a free-motion floral-star motif in each of the friendship stars and a matching flower in the plain blocks. I was already quite pleased with how the quilt was coming along, but this has added a whole new dimension to it. V decided to keep the borders fairly plain after all that activity in the centre. So the quilting is done and the binding is on. Later today I'll pass it back to J. She's volunteered to stitch down some more of the binding over the weekend. All that will be left to do next week is the label. It's been prepared already with all the important information, but I'm tempted to pretty it up a bit.

The official launch will be at the House Birthday party on Monday 9 August, but raffle tickets are on sale already. And there's a whole other team of people from the Neighbourhood House managing that side of things: counting and labeling tickets, keeping lists, counting money . . . Did I mention I love working with a team!

Yay Team!

Oh, I love a team! Unusually for a Victorian, not a football team, but a work-team. Here's why:
Yesterday morning this was a box of unconnected quilt blocks and squares. A couple of quilters had done some extra work to make spare triangle units. If you want to know how it looked, you can find it on the Quilters at Sussex Blog. Four of us got together at the Neighbourhood House yesterday afternoon to see what we could do about putting it together into a quilt top. Within three hours the job was done. It was so easy compared to doing it on my own. For a start, setting a time and place for a job helps me to get some focus. Then the company and wisdom of others is great for my motivation and problem-solving. While someone stitched, someone else pressed and another trimmed. Here are the details. We had cake and cookies and cups of tea and by dinner time I had a completed quilt top to take home. Today I'm going to drop into a couple of quilt stores to see about a border. Then there will be another team get together to do the basting. If yesterday's effort is anything to go by, we may even get to start the quilting on that day.