Senior Center Quilting - pt 2

After we finished the placemats for the Meals on Wheels participants some of the Seniors in our quilt group wanted to do something for ourselves. One of the Senior Center Board members had given me a couple of pictures of a jar, or pantry, quilt that he and his wife saw on display in the Midwest during a cross-country trip. I had seen the blocks on Janet Wickell's Quilting About site for a ginger jar and also the more traditional mason jars. I printed these out for the ladies and we decided to each get some fabrics and share them with the rest of us. So far one lady has made 4 wall hangings or small quilts using these patterns, two are quilting or ready to quilt wall hangings, and I am ready for the borders of mine. Here are pictures of the top 5 rows of mine, and the bottom two rows, and the strips of braided border that I have done so far. I will be putting the woodgrain fabric on the sides, then a narrow border of the background fabric before I attempt to sew on the braided borders. They are pretty stretchy so I am concerned about how to do that neatly, but I have gotten some advice from folks on the Quiltville Chat group so hopefully it will turn out OK. I got the directions for doing this border from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville.com

A couple of weeks ago I was telling the Sr Center ladies about my Atlanta Shop Hop fun and how some of the ladies on the bus tour wanted to see how I made the Grandmother's Flower Garden pieces with Quilt Patis. Two of them got interested in making some of their own so I shared some of my florals with them and they are off and running with it. They will probably be finished before me! Here is a photo I took yesterday of my GFG - with some of the top row partially finished and auditioning for a position!

I think that those who are going to do the Pantry Quilt are far enough along on them that we can begin thinking about what to do next. Last summer and fall we made 20 blocks for a sampler quilt to donate to the Senior Center and some of us are in the process of quilting those blocks, then we will assemble them as a quilt-as-you-go. I am thinking ahead to our next project. I'd like to do one of Bonnie's scrap quilts for the Center to raffle or to have on display. If we give it to the Center we can use some of the fabric that has been donated to us and each of us could make some blocks then we could sew them together. I'm going to show them pictures of some of those quilts in the next week or so and see what they think of that.