Full Circle

I finished a quilt last month, a quilt I started three years ago for the Young Women's program in our ward. I was asked to help the girls with a stake sponsored quilting project where the girls would make a quilt using one of the value colors and then give it away as a service project. Someone in the stake thought it would be a great idea . . . So we started a friendship quilt and I had all the girls make a quilt block, sign it and I would just have to get the blocks sewn together and quilted. That was the idea, anyway. We got all the signatures and half the blocks pieced then our stake and ward YW presidencies were changed and everything got put into my unfinished projects pile when the program went a different direction with the new leadership.

Fast forward to last May. My sewing room was a disaster area--fabric, notions and projects everywhere. I am a "walk into a room and set things down" kind of person. I want to be a "walk into a room and put things away" kind of person but I either get lazy or distracted or don't know where to put something and just plop it down and walk away and then clean and sort everything every couple of months. I can usually find things, but occasionally I forget about something at the bottom of a pile. Plus I had boxes and boxes of mom's fabric waiting for me to go through.

YW Friendship quilt blocks, our value color was green





So for mother's day and my birthday this year John made me shelves that spanned an entire wall of my sewing room. And I cleaned and sorted and put fabric, notions and projects away on my new shelves. It's a miracle! I am now a "walk into a room and put things away" person.  It has been a month and things are still put away. John said he envisioned a space that looked like an old fashioned mercantile. Since a lot of the fabric is my moms, any siblings and nieces or nephews are welcome to come and "shop". 

But while cleaning and sorting I found the unfinished YW friendship blocks with all those signatures and thought I really should finish this quilt before the girls are all grown and gone and give it to the YW president.  I know most of the girls, but I thought the quilt would mean more to the YW president, who has worked with the girls than to me. So I finished it, including all the value colors, and got more signatures of girls new to Young Women's since we started the quilt and all the leaders who had worked in the program with the past three years.  I stitched around the names of the young women and women who "stand as a witness of God" and was humbled to include my name with theirs on the quilt. What started as a forgotten assignment from the stake become my personal service project.

I titled the quilt "We Will Stand as a Witness of God"

We gave the quilt to Donna Egan, the YW president, at girls camp last week. Interestingly enough, it was the same camp that I went to with Annie as a new Beehive three weeks after we moved into our ward. (The first of 10 girls camp I went to in our ward.) The girls that were at the camp this year weren't even a twinkle in their parent's eyes 18 years ago. My circle of sisterhood has truly grown.