Why Do I Volunteer For These Things?

A long, long time ago someone at the library suggested a fun activity for children to go along with the Community Read of Grapes of Wrath. Now it seems to me that "fun" and Grapes of Wrath have very little to do with each other. But I was mistaken. Quilting. Yes, making a little Depression Era block. The little prototype is above. Ten wedges. Wonder Under.

I have been ironing 7 yards of WU onto various bits of colorful fabric and tracing my little cardboard wedge pattern onto the paper backing and cutting out each little wedge with my tiny scissors. I need a minimum of 500 wedges for a possible 30 children ages 7-12. I want them to be able to pick and choose.

I now have a cardboard box full of wedges and the next step is to line them up and count to see how many I have. Then remove the paper backing. My friend S volunteered to cut the 12.5 squares of backing, top and batting for the quilt sandwiches. Sixty each of those. Can I just say that I will do anything for S from this day forward?

The kids will get a short lecture on the Depression and the need to "make do" with what is on hand without money for shopping. I have canning jars full of rubber bands, string and buttons as examples of thrift and reuse. And a big scrap bag of fabric. Old newspaper for the center circle pattern for each kid and a wooden clothespin to crease the backing square into quarters for correct positioning of the wedges.

We are using WU just because handsewing the wedges together would be a multi hour task and we only have an hour or so. So the handsewing will be quilting around the Dresden Plate with a little running stitch and utility quilting needles with big eyes.

A mini quilting group has graciously volunteered to help me on the class days-- with help selecting wedges, creasing fabric, ironing the wedges down and threading needles and sewing. Yes, class days. Two Fridays. This Friday and next. So I can make more patches next week if I don't have enough.

I'm keeping things simple. And I have always been happy to see how kids take to quilting and handwork. We did a needle turn applique demo once and an 8 year old boy worked on his applique and chatted with us. That week he brought his finished work into the library to show to me. Very proud. And rightly so.

The rest of this week I will be making a handsewn set of "step ups" of the process for making a Dresden Plate and quilting it. And removing paper from the wedges and making more if I have fallen short of my number of wedges needed. I will not be blogging very much. But will have charming pictures to post of the kid's work on Saturday.