Wow!

I announced this giveaway to encourage people to comment - it sure worked!  Thanks so much, everyone, for taking the time to post your thoughts in a comment.  I love comments, and always do my best to answer if an answer is appropriate.  That's one thing I love about blogging - I can become friends with delightful quilters all over the world!

About the contest - the prize kit will be my choice, not the winners.  It will be a good one, however - quilt shop quality fabric, etc.  I'm not taking any chances that the winner might want one of my favorites LOL!

Special quilts - Gifts from the Heart

I've been a member of a small quilt for almost 20 years now. We call ourselves the Tangled Threads. We meet once a week a each other's homes. I've mentioned the group in past posts, so some of you may remember them. This past year we've been involved in making some special quilts, and now that they've all been received I can post pictures.

One of our members has a son who is in the army. He's part of a tank platoon stationed in Iraq. Last fall Kim found some army fabric so she made her son a quilt and sent it to him. He asked her if she could make quilts for the rest of his platoon so she enlisted the help of the Tangled Threads. The quilts were pieced by several of the members and quilted by both me and a couple other people. Kim's son finally had a chance to send her a picture of the platoon with their quilts - I didn't want to write about it until I had that picture along with their permission to post it. They all really liked them - especially in the winter. I guess it gets cold in Iraq in the winter.

We also spent the last several months working on a special quilt for one of our members. I've mentioned her before when I've talked about her battle with ovarian cancer and the program through Blank Fabrics to raise money to fight ovarian cancer. We received some fabrics from Blank Fabrics as a thank you for all the blocks we sent them, so we decided to make a comfort quilt for Peggy from the fabrics. We added some of our own, and each of us made a self portrait by adapting an appliqué pattern from the book Friends Forever Quilting Together by Nancy Smith and Lynda Milligan of Possibilities. One of our members made a block to represent Peggy, and another made a block with two people - Peggy in her kerchief and an unnamed "Thread". (I've posted a picture of that block as well as my "self portrait" in which I'm wearing a jumper - still my favorite work outfit even though they are out of fashion.)Another member sewed the blocks together, I quilted it, and still another member bound it. It truly was a group love project. Peggy was delighted with it, and took it to wrap around her during her next chemo treatment.

One of the true joys of quilting is making love gifts for others - whether they are people one knows or for charity to be given to whoever needs them. The more involved I've become making love quilts the more I want to make. Quilts are truly gifts from the heart.