The Satisfaction Of Making Things For Others

While it’s true that I love sewing my own clothes and making things for our home such as quilts, pillows etc…it also gives me great pleasure to make things for others; Christmas and birthday gifts and donations to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Quilts of Valor.

Today I want to write about making things to donate. On this front, two such opportunities came to light last Fall. My first inspiration stemmed from an article I read in the October/November 2018 issue of Quilting Arts magazine, entitled “Artists Give Back” (pg. 29), in which the author, Jamie Fingal, described her “Hearts of the Home” quilt wall hanging project in conjunction with the Habitat for Humanity organization.

At the end of Ms. Fingal’s article there appeared a “reader’s challenge”; to make house-themed, 12×12″ quilted wallhangings with the intent of presenting these to Habitat for Humanity families upon the completion of their newly-constructed homes. Several of the reader’s challenge creations were to be featured in the Spring issue of Quilting Arts magazine and a firm submission deadline was set for December 1. What a joyful and inspiring prospect!

With this fresh inspiration in mind, I figured it was time to get cracking. My first attempt at the prescribed “Hearts of the Home” theme featured a simple house design including machine embroidery elements such as flowers and script. I chose a line from the Crosby, Stills and Nash song, “Our House” and realized well after the fact that I added an extra “very” to the lines of text. (it was definitely a “keep off off the grass” sign moment, where the mind corrects and erases redundancy while reading) I also incorporated some hand-embroidery elements for the cat facial features and whiskers.

My second attempt for this particular project I titled “Home Safe” and was inspired by the 1922 Craftsman bungalow, “Elmdale” design. I chose batik fabric scraps from my most recent “Storm at Sea” quilt and using this as the background, wanted to create the feeling of everyone being safely inside the house for the night. The night sky fabric reminds me of Van Gogh’s iconic “Starry Night” painting. My tendencies to get a bit carried away with attention to detail definitely came into play here, especially with the house detail and the bicycle. When the Quilting Arts Spring issue was released in late February earlier this year, I was delighted to discover this second piece was chosen as one of the featured submissions in the follow-up magazine article. (Quilting Arts, April/May 2019 issue, page 77)

The inspiration: The “Elmdale”

I first heard about the “Quilts of Valor” organization (see qovf.org) during an informative presentation given by our CA Central Coast regional representative, Mary Carnegie, at our local VFW chapter last November. I learned that quilters from all over the U.S. are creating patriotic-themed Quilts (approximately 60×80″ in size) for specially- nominated veterans on an ongoing basis. Sewn with love and appreciation for our Vets and their years of service, these lap blanket-sized quilts are presented to numerous nominated candidates at commemorative patriot ceremonies throughout each year. As it happened, my maternal grandfather fought in WWI (Army), my father-in-law served as a Chaplin’s assistant (also Army) on the battlefields all over Europe during WWII and my father and his brother (Navy and Army respectively) both served in the Korean conflict back in the 50’s, so for me, contemplating making a “Quilt of Valor” is personal as I’m sure it is for many of the quilters sewing quilts for this particular cause.

At this point I have purchased the fabric and chosen the design for my first Quilt of Valor and look forward to sharing the finished piece here in a future post.