Comfort Quilt Group

There is a local quilting guild in town that meets monthly and the surrounding areas that I have yet to join. I was invited to attend one of the sub-groups that meets. This group of between 10-20 participants meets with their machines and portable tools to make and distribute Comfort Quilts to children and adults in crisis as well as in grief. That appealed to me, so I went with my local quilting friend to a meeting today.

Women were already busy at machines, laying out fabrics and projects and gathering up ones to work on. So many people donate fabric and quilting tools that they have a closed trailer to hold it all and its sorted by colors, by sizes cut and by styles. 

I asked how I could be of service and was given some simple tasks. One was to rip a seam. LOW & BEHOLD, there is a way to do it, and I got my first lesson there on how to do it correctly.

Everyone there has parts of quilting they like to do better than others. Some cut and put together simple 'kits' for another person to take home, piece and return next month. Others were hand-quilting, and others sorting or pressing.

They also host a pot luck for lunch, sit down and relax, then put things away and go home around 1:30 PM.

This group of very loving women set about the task of loving others in a special way. It made me think about how any of us love ourselves, and made me think about how I do or if I do love myself.

I am trying to evolve in this area. 

Sometimes self-love is tentative, half-hearted and downright skimpy as an eighth-inch seam. Normal wear and tear on such a skimpy seam will cause its fabric to shred. So it is for us as well.

I watched how they all checked and double checked their own work and the work of others on these quilts, and was told that when they go to someone ill, the quilt may be washed in hot water, sometimes every day, and needs to be securely pieced.

Hot water for a quilt is like heavy emotions or stressors that come at us with each day, day after day. No wonder people 'come apart at the seams'.

I think about the people in my life who have pieced me together and how few of them were checked at all for what they said or did. However, I see that I have a role to play as well in the woman-making efforts.  

Its never too late for me to be aware of who says or does something affirmative or who in my life is critical, bullies me or doesn't have my best interest in heart. In my awareness, I can reinforce the seams of my life so that I last longer, healthier, wiser and with more usefulness to myself and others.

It was a good morning!