Never-ending

The Community First!Quilters meet monthly, contributing our presence to a couple of places. One is a fabric store at which we meet 2 of every 3 months, and the other is a quilting store. The difference? The first sells fabrics for quilts and quilters, the second features long-arm machines on which one can rent time to quilt the results of all that fabric purchased.

The CF!Quilters get donations, lots and lots of donations, in the form of finished quilts, rolls of batting, cases of thread, and destashing efforts of people or their surviving families. This was one of four boxes we unpacked this past Saturday.

Four more from the same source are sitting at the second meeting location, and four more are being held temporarily in the home of one of the members. In addition, a member who works at the quilting store/studio brought in several kits and projects that had been donated at that location over the past two months (while the group was on holiday hiatus).

The CF!Q group is full of enthusiastic takers-on and, gods help me, I jumped in wholeheartedly too. As the boxes were emptied and the contents either distributed or added to the current inventory of "Please Take and USE!" bins of fabric, I grabbed an empty and started filling it with those projects to which I've committed. There are 4 categories filling my box:

1. finished tops needing Size Reduction Treatment (SRT)
   
2. juvenile/kiddie prints (because surely I can stuff more fabric into those 2 cubbies?)
3. scraps
4. started projects that need finishing

I made a flimsy that I'd already determined needed SRT, so I tucked that into the box as soon as I got home. It wasn't until Tuesday, after the Dreadfuls, that I visited the box again to take a second look at what followed me home.

1. Finished tops needing SRT. To mine (I just need to remove the borders to get it to Twin size)

90" x 114"

is added three more. First, an eye-crossing celebration of color and dots, binding included.

Taken for my own reference, as I suspect I'll be planning most of the SRT in my comfy recliner.

Next, a string-ish top with the bottom two rows partially unsewn and 3 more columns ready to be added. I might make two (supplemented from my own stash) out of all this!

77" x 95", 4.5" (finished) blocks

And thirdly, a batik beauty with an additional hunk of batik.

96" x 98"

2. Juvenile/kiddie fabrics:

3. Scraps. The flower/dots (lower right) isn't a scrap, but I grabbed that hunk because I have plenty of scraps of the black fabric next to it. They will play well together. The blue was a blend and has been trashed. The green was also trashed because...glitter. I had to ask myself the hard question: do I need green so badly that I'm willing to accept the glitter that it comes with? Answer: no, especially for so small a piece!

Harvest prints, the remains after garments were made from the fabrics. Now ironed, folded, and stashed with the Kitchen Sink fabrics.

4. Started projects that need finishing. These were brought to the meeting by the quilting studio member, as well as the remaining fabrics from the completed BOM opportunity/fundraising quilt (which sold for $1600 last month--no fundraising/raffle efforts needed, and all the proceeds went to Community First! Village.)

The BOM fabrics are fanned out in the upper right, finishing with the strips in the lower right. Those within eye-/ear-shot agreed that they might go well with the unfinished 9-patch square-in-square project.

Then again, the BOM scraps might also go well with this one, which I grabbed because I have that bundle of Kaufman fabrics (top left) should this project need additional fabrics.

This one is so low volume that I think the metaphorical remote was put on Mute, then thrown away! It'll be quite a departure from my usual projects.

I don't need to worry about backings for any of these (in case I can't find something I like in my existing stash) as the quilt studio member kept insisting, to everyone, that we should bring our flimsies to her first because she apparently has more backing donations than she knows what to do with, and would love to pair that stash with our work.

The largest wad in the box is this heavy, unwieldy hunk of polyester batting, bed sheet backing (50/50 cotton/poly blend), and questionable fabrics overall.

It's been partially tied, but I suspect that effort was dropped as soon as the maker realized how horribly everything was lining up. Those ripples lower left (below) aren't from hastily and partially spreading this out. They're the result of trying to line up two corners in order to measure one side of this.

First thing I'll do is untie it, ditch the poly batting, and take a good look at the top itself. I think it can be salvaged and given a good home. In fact, during my evening walk yesterday my mind was busily working out a possible solution for widening it from 63" to 74". Of all the projects in the box, this one seems to have weaseled its way into my head!

Given my purposefully-dwindling personal fabric stash, once it's gone and I've finished all my own tops, I can easily see myself finishing out my time completing others' projects, drawing as needed from the never-ending, ever-replenished CF!Q donations. Having finished my mother's project for my brother, working actively on completing a GFG started by a Magpie, and mindful of a hooped and partially quilted vintage top patiently waiting for me to get back to it, I'm no stranger to that role.