Quilts of a Non-Quilter

I am not a quilter, yet somehow, I’ve made six quilts since May last year. This is thanks, of course, to my becoming involves with Quilting for Community. Here’s the back story:

In early February 2022, I was in the process of making a fiber art wall piece for my cousin, Karen, out of her father’s (my uncle’s) old ties. My Uncle Bob died of cancer in 1995, and Karen (who is the youngest of the cousins on my mother’s side) had kept his ties from when he was working as an accountant for the IRS.

I also wanted to knit shawl as a birthday present for my sister. I needed a skein of yarn in a color I didn’t have. Maridee of the Yarnover Truck announced she would be in Chatsworth at a Makers Marketplace. I was able to get a skein of the perfect shade of yarn, and I had a great time at the marketplace. I bought some handmade greeting cards, soaps, candles, a beaded thingy to hang from my rear view mirror, and a crocheted elephant basket.
 A shop called My Creative Outlet was the hub of the event, and had several vendors set up inside. Off to one side was a sign that said Quilting for Community. There were sewing machines, quilts on the wall, and a group of women talking, sewing, and quilting, I guessed. It amuses me now that I didn’t go over and talk to them. I thought that’s cool, but I don’t quilt.

A few months later, Judy and I went to Leslie’s Pool Supply in Chatsworth, as it was the only location that had a part she needed. I told her about this cool quilting shop I had seen over there, and we stopped in on the way back towards home. This time we talked with Lizz and the others for about an hour. We found out Q4C is a nonprofit organization that offers quilting instruction for free, and the quilts produced are donated to hospitals, hospice, and shelters. They donate quilts to the housing programs of Hope, the Mission, who I did some grantwriting for from 2015-2018.

We were impressed with the work they were doing. We contemplated going to volunteer, to assist with finishing quilts for donation. And then neither of us went back. I followed Quilting for Community on social media. I saw when they delivered quilts to Hope the Mission and Southern California Hospice Foundation.

I was doing a lot of knitting and crocheting. I did a large community collaborative yarn installation for the Reseda Summer Art Festival in July. I was receiving yarn swatches retired from shops and was making blankets from them. I planned to donate the blankets to a service organization. The only hitch was, these blankets aren’t really machine washable due to the mix of fibers in the yarns. This makes then unsuitable for everyday use by individuals and families. One day late in the summer I saw a video where Q4C had given a group of quilts to Southern California Hospice Foundation and I decided that could be the recipient of my blankets.

I emailed the executive director, Michelle, to offer her the blankets. She even asked if I knew about Q4C, since I’m close to them in the Valley. I said I do as a matter of fact, that’s how I found out about her organization. In one of those wonderful coincidences in life, when I got off the phone with Michelle, there was a text on my screen that Judy forwarded from Lizz to ask if she was the one who does the grant writing.

I picked up the phone and called Lizz right away. I started grant writing for Q4C in September, began hanging out there one day a week. We made plans for a textile arts group to use the Design Center as a meeting place. Coming out of the pandemic, I was still spending the majority of my time at home alone. When I would go over to Quilting for Community, I would remember how great it is to spend time with people, especially with creative people who share my interests. Becoming involved in this community is the best thing that has happened for me since I left Hope of the Valley in 2018.

In November that year I was contacted by The Elder Statesman, a fashion house in Los Angeles, to customize a pair of Ugg boots for a photo shoot. They had 16 pairs of Uggs that they were having different local artists customize for the photo shoot in December. In one of those small world moments, when I visited their factory downtown and they showed me all the different pairs of boots, I knew four of the other artists. They also used one of my baskets, my Four Seasons Headpiece and my Car Cozy in the shoot. Great fun.

Fortunately, my early efforts at grant writing for Q4C were fruitful. I was helping Lizz on some of her administrative tasks, and giving my very humble opinions on issues of nonprofit management. Around May of 2023, she suggested I join the board, and I did.

Then Bailey, the Creative Director at The Elder Statesman contacted me again and asked if I could make a quilt out of sone of their left over cashmere knit fabrics. I said yes, then I asked Lizz if I could use the long arm machine to quilt it.

On that first quilt I learned a lot about handling the fabric and the long arm machine, as you do. Because of the way knit fabrics stretch and move, the image on the front of the quilt had to be hand-sewn.
Those fabrics are also quite thick, lush cashmere. I had to learn what the long arm machine can and cannot sew over. Lizz mentioned some things we would know for next time, and we tossed around some ideas for art quilts made from thrift store sweaters.

I didn’t know there would be a next cashmere quilt, and the thrift store sweater idea is on the list of things that may never come to fruition. That list has dozens of ideas on it.

But there were two more quilts of the same design in December. The front, or quilt top, was again hand pieced. The back was machine pieced. I quilted them on the long arm machine. And due to the thickness (that can not go under any machine presser foot), I hand sewed the binding. TES was happy with the quilts, and I was thrilled they were happy. I had now done three quilts at Quilting for Community, and still claimed to be a non-quilter.

In late January this year, Bailey asked if I could do a patchwork car cover for a GT3. Of course, I said yes. It was a challenge, and it was fun.

In early April, they asked for some knit cashmere patchwork items for their Holiday ’24 photo shoot: a curtain, two queen-sized pillow cases, a quilt, and a quilt that looks like a Twister game mat. This brought my quilt count up to five.

All this time, in the long arm room is a rack with some beautifully constructed quilt tops that had come in with a fabric donation. Some quilter had done all the work to assemble these tops, then had no interest in finishing them. As I was quilting in the long arm room, I fell in love with one of these tops. I bought it to finish as a king size quilt for mine and my husband’s bed.

When working with something, sewing something, you get to know it intimately. You get to know which fabrics will shed the most and dribble little loops of yarn from their cut edges, which need to go on the bottom under the presser foot to help control their stretchiness. When you’re following someone else’s work, you get to see how good they are. The quilter who made the African Animals quilt was good. I may not be a quilter, but, boy, I do know sewing: and that quilter did a good job. So that’s six quilts in the past year.

Not bad for a non-quilter.