On Quilt Guilds

Since I frequent my local quilt shop and visit others when the chance presents itself, I know a lot of people in quilt guilds-I have even spoken at a couple about books that I co-authored. A guild is basically a group of quilters that get together, participate in fabric challenges, learn new quilty things, support favorite charitable efforts and show off their accomplishments – motivating them to actually finish some of their projects.

I can’t be in a guild – my tight schedule, commute time, young children, cost of sitters…but I have found the next best thing. I call it my online guild.

The RedThreadQuilters came into being as a group of quilting friendships that developed in another group working on One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts for our Chinese born daughters and granddaughters. Once we had amassed enough fabric to make a 517+ Good Wishes Quilt, Melinda was astute enough to realize that some of us just weren’t going to leave and we should go ahead and commit to being quilters in a spin-off ‘guild-like’ group.

We each support our own Charitable efforts and have worked together to donate quilts to homeless in Arizona, orphanages in China, and the Love Without Boundaries fund raising auction.

We do block exchanges, play online bingo for fabric wins, challenges, secret friend packages, birthday Fat Quarter bundles…and now we are starting our first mystery quilt authored by Melinda. Mystery Quilts are where you have general fabric purchasing guidelines but don’t know what your quilt will look like until you start putting it together.

Here it is, my step one results of that inaugural mystery quilt…


Photo 20 – Day 37

And just to keep the kids in the loop – here they each are showing off their kid size quilts – both made in ‘live’ mystery classes at the local quilt shop. J is carefully balancing her mustache...not really sure why...

Photo 21 – Day 37