Lorraine's here!

Yesterday about 9 of us met at Mrs. Furui's house to do some basting. Poor Mrs. Furui probably stayed up all night getting our bazaar quilt to flimsy stage! The day before I had handed her the last embroidered corner of this quilt and flippantly said,

"It would be nice if this could be basted on Thursday so that Mrs. Okutomi can take it home to quilt. Then WE don't have to think about it anymore."

Mrs. Okutomi lives a couple of hours away and we only get to see her two or three times a year. She hasn't been able to do too much work on the bazaar quilt up until now but we assured her that we'd leave the quilting for her to do. (Not that she really WANTED to do the quilting. She just felt bad that she wasn't helping us too much and since she is the only one who knows how to machine quilt, we delegated the job to her.)

So after I gave the corner to Mrs. Furui she put the corner borders on and put it all together and even made the final wide border. I'd forgotten that there even WAS a final wide pieced border.

But the quilt is beautiful and we were so happy to be able to show it to Lorraine who had sent us the Block of the Month kit to begin with. It is thanks to Lorraine that we were able to learn the faux applique technique and were introduced to colored pencils and sealing and embroidery etc. This is really Lorraine's quilt and we are so proud to be able to raffle off an Australian designed quilt this year!



After a lot of hugs and welcomings we all, Lorraine included, set to work on basting the quilt. A lot of hands makes for fast and fun work. People threading needles, 4 or 5 people sitting on the quilt basting, some ladies getting tea and lunch ready, a lot of chatting (and some of these friends really can use their English with Lorraine! I don't know why they don't use it when they are with me!)

More tomorrow!