Pictures of Thursday patchwork day

Yesterday was a patchwork day with lots of activity going on. I don't think I once sat down and just chatted with people.

The morning started out with showing some of our latest projects.

Mrs. Furui finished another donation quilt for the Ronald McDonald House. She had friends make up the stars and she did all the hand quilting. HANDQUILTING!!! Just beautiful!

This is the Crazy Goose Chase quilt ready to take to Ronald McDonald too. I could never spread out the quilt at my house so I wanted to get a last picture of it all in one piece.

And here is the collaborative quilt Mrs. Furui and I did together. As you can see, the binding needs to be put on but again, Mrs. Furui's wide room lends itself to photographing quilts so we've taken another photo. I was so pleased that everyone praised my quilting attempt.

Mrs. Harada put her circle quilt together... I don't know how long she's been working on this but it has been awhile. She asked for all of us to donate pink fabrics and then she started cutting and piecing. Most of those RED fabrics seem to be mine. I guess I didn't know the difference between RED and PINK. Mrs. Harada has this at the flimsy stage and she will baste it and hand quilt it. This is going to go to her new daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Ochiai thought you should see what I look like when I'm playing with my camera....

Now... Onto the main event.

The purpose of our gathering together is to work on the kindergarten bazaar quilt and so we put away our own things and got down to work. And this is the way we work.

Here is Mrs. Furui and me down on the floor deciding about block placement. (You can see that my knees have recovered.)

And slowly, the quilt grows. Mrs. Yamaguchi and Mrs. Harada making block adjustments.

Mrs. Okutomi ironing, Mrs. Takagishi hand sewing and Mrs. Ochiai putting blocks together.

Mariko-sensei, the kindergarten principal, came to give us support and nourishment (she brought cakes for everybody AND their families!)

"Now what do you think about THIS block placement?"

Interestingly, though THIS was the original plan, Mrs. Okutomi observed that the "river" cut the quilt in two and the whole thing needed more movement.

We decided on THIS layout, meaning that Mrs. Okutomi will make us another "river" this month (she made the first one too. They are her bright fabrics) and we will stagger the layout.

"Whoops, that means you'll have to leave the quilt laid out on your floor this whole month Mrs. Furui."

I think she will put it away and rely on the photographs we have taken.

I'm putting an awful lot of pictures in this post but here is last one of the original patchwork group with Mariko-sensei, the kindergarten principal. Mrs. Okutomi, Mrs. Furui and I put together the first bazaar quilt 20 years ago.