Every January, in lieu of our normal monthly meetings, our quilt guild has a charity sew-in. Other than our biennial quilt show, I think this is the activity that gets the most membership participation. Members form teams of about 6-10 people, including a team leader. Each team brings sewing machines, cutting tools, ironing tools, etc. to create quilts in an assembly line fashion.
Usually the charity and a particular quilt block is selected by the charity committee, then blocks made by guild members are collected throughout the year at monthly meetings. Battings and fabrics for quilt backings are often donated.
This year, each team chose a different quilt block and some quilt tops were made by team members prior to the sew-in. A total of 53 quilts were made to be donated to orphans in Honduras. (My team used the rail fence block and I've posted one of the quilts that I helped make on my profile.)_____________________________________________________
Here's another idea. Last year, I initiated a slice quilt group within my guild, which I named "Slice Capades". There are many ways to approach a slice quilt. My group of six decided to use an original art print from one of our group who is an accomplished artist. We enlarged the print, divided it into six approximately equal pieces and selected our pieces at random. Each of us saw only our piece and not the entire picture. We each secretly recreated our piece/block, six times, using whatever technique we wanted. By a certain due date, we completed our six blocks and exchanged them, such that each of us had the whole picture. We were all supposed to complete putting our blocks together, layering and quilting to create six completed quilts in time to meet the due date for displaying them all together in our guild's 2009 quilt show. (A photo of my slice quilt is on my profile--it's a picture of a red barn.)
