Make new friends, but keep the old … that is the motto I would like to define my life. I remember singing it as a Girl Scout, both as a young girl and later as the leader of my daughter’s Girl Scout troop.
With my involvement in Heritage Quilters of Huntsville and as the founder of two stitch groups through the years, it’s evident that I do live this motto every day. I love doing things and collaborating, instigating, planning and celebrating with friends (that includes my family as friends, too!).
Over the years, I’ve
been involved with several block swaps with friends. The very first one was a swap where 7 of us chose our colors for a signature block or a square-in-a-square block. We made two blocks for each of the participants. I chose pinks and reds and the square-in-a-square block. My plan was to put red hearts in the middle of each of my blocks. When I received my blocks, I was dismayed because one of the participants made signature blocks for me. My first response was to not put them in the quilt or to put them on the back. But, then, I thought, no, they need to be on the front as there is always someone in a group who is different in some way, and that makes life more fun! Here is the result. I think the two signature blocks add an extra bit of interest to this heart quilt.
When I started my second quilting group -- Stitchers Etc. -- we had a guild challenge that was about our quilting journey. The quilt had to have a path of some kind through it. My quilt symbolizes the conflicts from my first quilting group that became the beginning for Stitchers Etc. I designed this quilt with a lot of symbolism that is meaningful to the first members of Stitchers Etc.
One friend who I have known since the early 2000s is Sarah. We
have stitched together, retreated together, served on guild boards together and
collaborated together on lots of different projects. In 2016/2017, when I was going
through a particularly tough time at work, Sarah came to me and asked if we
could collaborate on quilting together. I jumped at the opportunity and had
just the perfect book for us to start our collaboration with – Collaborative
Quilting by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston – and its sister book Collaborating
Again.
We studied these books and came up with a plan: We would
take turns picking out a block each month and then make blocks for both
ourselves and each other. Over the course of the next year, we made lots of crazy
blocks out of lots of crazy fabric. It was a lot of fun … and it helped me get
through my professional work challenges. Sarah’s friendship meant the world to
me then and it still does.
Sarah and I were so excited about our collaboration, that we
did a presentation on it at a Heritage Quilters of Huntsville meeting in 2019.
Then, when I was president of the guild, we challenged our members to create
collaborations that resulted in unique quilts. Each member of the group had to
piece a quilt top based on their collaboration. About eight months later, those who took up
our challenge showed their collaborative quilts in an inspiring program. It was
fun to see how group members took the collaborative rules they came up with and
made their own original quilt designs.
Also during that year, I began working on quilting designs using
the blocks Sarah and I made. My favorite one is the Girl Scout Quilt (pictured at the beginning of this blog and based on a Jen Kingwell design). But, I’m
also in love with the very original Who Let The Dogs Out (although it is wobbly), Disco Dancing
(made with very cheap purple and striped fabrics found at a discount store) and Soft
Kitty (an homage to my husband and daughter’s favorite show The Big Bang Theory
and now showcased at my daughter’s house). There are two more quilts to come
out of this collaboration that are now in the quilting stages.
Our collaboration led to many more! I’ve teamed up with
friend Maria on several projects, including Flying Home and Maria Made Me Do It.
I’ve got quilts in various stages with both friends Elida
and Joan, and of course there are more block swaps ongoing even now within Stitchers Etc. But, I
will never forget the friendship and fun Sarah and I shared during our year of
collaboration. To me, collaboration is a true gift of being part of a quilting
community.
Hugs and Hope-
Kari
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