November 28 gathering

For this gathering, we brought our completed 12.5" blocks, made of the fabrics given to us by Carol. We used whatever pattern we desired. We found that our challenge, regardless of the size, was ensuring that we all had 12.5" blocks. As you may well know, when you create your own quilt, you simply cut all of your blocks down to the same size, and the exact (uniform) size of the finished blocks sometimes does not matter. Well, with a group quilt project like this, size does matter.

Joyce volunteered to take the first batch home and sew them together into a quilt, and we had nine left:

Since there are still squares coming in, we will have enough for two quilts!

Some of us also brought our scrap quilts to share. And, of course, we had lots of other quilts to share. Our online photo album should be available in a couple of days.

And what quilting group's gathering would be complete without great food and great conversation?

Welcome to our blog!

Today we held our first gathering. Carol put out a call for all of the African American quilters in the Greater Harrisburg, PA area to get together this afternoon. This has been something she has been wanting to do for awhile; I hope she is able to write about it here on the blog at some point. LaQuita had a lot to do with this, as well. We are so thankful to them both!

So, the appointed day has come and gone, and wow! It was amazing.

Carol is formally welcoming us, and sharing her vision for our group.

We are each sharing our quilting journey--how we got started, who influenced us, who taught us, and where our journey has brought us to at this point. We are sharing and listening with excitement and anticipation; finally, a group of likeminded quilting addicts!!! What you can't see here is that we have already begun planning future fabric shopping trips!

We of course had a Show and Tell; we brought our projects and shared them with the group. We will need to think about creating a photo gallery of our work at some point, but here is just one of the many quilts that was shared. The first photo is the top, and the second photo is the back! What an incredible piecing job was done on the back, even!

We will be getting together again within a month. Carol was SO generous; not only did she prepare the food (and it was delicious!), but she also provided two fat quarters to each quilter, so that we could all create a block or two to contribute to a group quilt. We are SO excited!