Arrrgh!!!

Elegant Mother's church held a Bazaar on December 1st. Her Empty Nester Sewing group has been working on things to donate for the past six or more months, diligently finishing one project and rushing into the next. Peg, who manages the group, kept everyone on track with e-mails about what had been completed and what was still in the works.

I offered two lap-quilt size tops to be quilted by a member of the church. I was asked if I would create a baby quilt from six embroidered animal blocks. I used some of my batiks, and shopped for borders and a great backing of all sorts of animals. There was also a small pre-printed panel of the 12 Days of Christmas to which I added borders. In mid-October, the four tops were handed over to be machine quilted. I went home and made binding for everything. (There are pictures of some of the binding to the right.)

Now, you'd think these projects would have been finished within four weeks. They were small jobs that didn't require a huge expenditure of time. But, there were two things I didn't know. First, Cheryl was the person who was in charge of the entire bazaar, and second......I'm not sure, but I don't think she had ever used her long arm quiting machine, so there was a big learning curve involved.

With some prompting from Peg, she managed to get one piece done ten days before the Bazaar. A second one came through three days later. Of course, they were the two smallest pieces. The last two quilts came to me three and four days prior to the bazaar. There was no point in shouting about it. I sat down each morning and set things up to sew the binding to the face of the quilts, and each evening, I sewed the binding to the back of the quilt by hand. I put the finishing stitches into the last one Friday evening.

I dropped the quilts off at 7:45 on Saturday morning, and discovered that Cheryl had hurt her back, and everything had been dumped in Peg's lap. We were very fortunate that Peg was able to rise to the occasion. Everything was tagged and priced, and laid out in inviting ways. The quilts were pinned to dividers, with a bit of the back turned over so that people could see the backing without touching the quilts.

They made an astonishing $1500! And, the Empty Nester Group was responsible for 75% of that. The quilts brought in approximately $310! Cheryl is talking about the bazaar for next year. Peg is looking cross-eyed and saying "NO WAY!" I'm with Peg, but I think I will look for some simple patterns for lap quilts that might be done and set aside until the Empty Nesters decide to participate once again.

I'm happy to say that I donated two loaves of Pumpkin Bread to the Bakery Table, too! *G*