“How it All Started”
By: Sue P.
As I worked on reorganizing the photos on our website, I was
reminded of how time flies by and where it all began. So, I’m going to try to tell you all about
how our quilting group began. In the
fall of 2008, I signed up for a beginning quilting class at the Quiltfabric.com
store in Willowbrook, Illinois, where I met Linda P. and Lois. Little did
we know a few of us would still be making quilts together so many years later!
To give you a little perspective on how times change, here’s where
we were then: Linda and Lois had
recently retired from teaching and the IRS. Lois had three single 20- and 30-something
children. Linda had two married daughters and two toddler granddaughters. I was working part-time, had a teenage son in
high school, two 20-something daughters, one in college and another in grad
school. And here’s a snapshot of our
families now, so you can see how things change: all three of Lois’s
40-something children are married and she has 8 grandchildren (ages 1-14).
Linda’s granddaughters are about in or near their 20’s. Two of my kids are
30-something, and my oldest just turned 40 and has given us two grandkids, one in
middle school.
(need
to find photos)
Following this class, still in 2009, Chris created another
class for us to continue improving our quilt making skills. By this time,
we’d become friends, and after each class we went out to lunch at local
restaurants. It was becoming more of a
social group than a class. This one was
a giant quilt with lots of pieces and borders, quite a bit more challenging to
us with just one year of experience! Fortunately, it was a block-a-month
format. It took a while, but we persevered, and these quilts were born!
After this class we realized we wanted to continue meeting, but we
all had different quilting ideas and preferences. So instead of a new
class, we quilted at home, and in 2010, we started a charity project out of
Chris's Willowbrook store’s Annex. Chris donated the fabric and Lois,
Linda P., Mary Lou, Maura, Joni, Debbie and I, with the help of dozens of
volunteers, made and donated over 350 pillowcases to hospitals and shelters in
the area as part of AllPeopleQuilt.com’s “Million
So now we’d had a taste of success, and a lot more donated fabric…so
we had to continue! It’s now 2011, and
time to give quilts a try. Linda
arranged for us to meet at the Burr Ridge Park District in their community
room. We brought our sewing machines, a
few irons, and of course, we provided lunch!
It was quite an eclectic group: we had customers from the store,
volunteers who read about us in the newspaper, and friends and family. One lady I remember chatting with was visiting
from Kalamazoo, and accompanied her friend to help us out. My daughter had just finished college and had
time on her hands, so she came and pieced her first quilt top for us. Linda P. brought a couple friends from Water
Aerobics class; one friend, Linda D, also brought her friend Linda D, both of
whom are still members of our sewing and lunching group today! (https://mqg2011.blogspot.com/2011/).
Around this time, Chris relocated the store to a larger location
in Westmont, Illinois. This location had
a giant room for classroom space, which Chris offered to us for Charity Sewing.
From this time until the store closed in 2017, we met on the first and third
Tuesdays each month to make quilts. Our
group got much larger, and with the help of new members--Sue B, Sue M, Sue S,
Marianne, Helen, Barb, Jan, Joy, Olga, Eileen, Donna, Denice, Arlene and others—we
were able to create many more quilts. (As you’ll notice on the chart of quilts
at https://www.blogger.com/u/2/blog/page/edit/1292451745558256133/941007724109431009 our output increased
substantially!)
Sometime in 2016, in preparation for the store closure, we began
meeting at Linda P.’s vacant condo in Darien.
We continued meeting there on our regular first and third Tuesdays, and
we’ve even had a few luncheons and dinners to celebrate holidays, etc. Even the former shop owner Chris has joined
our group, and sews with us twice a month.
We plodded along quite comfortably for the next few years and
hundreds of quilts were created and donated, until the world threw us a
curveball, Covid19. In March of 2020 a
crazy virus was discovered spreading through the world and literally killing
people! This was the beginning of a new way of life for all of us. New words
and phrases became part of our everyday conversations. ‘Shelter in place’, social
distancing’, ‘essential workers’, ‘curbside pickup’, ‘e-learning’ and ‘work
from home’ are now common in our regular speech. Fortunately, most of us were well isolated
from the Covid realities, due in large part to the fact that we listened to,
and paid attention to, the new and crazy rules we were asked to follow. We all had friends, neighbors or family
members who saw the realities of Covid.
And eventually, I think, we all had our own bout of the virus. (I held out a really long time--January 1, 2023,
was my first positive, and it was just like a regular chest cold, lucky for
me!)
The main thing that affected the group was the ‘Shelter in Place’
rule. Meaning stay home! But as we sat at home, we still made quilts
to donate, as sewing at home is simply logical!
We were not able to meet in person during a lot of this time, so we took
advantage of technology and had meetings on ‘Zoom’. We all logged in to the online program ‘Zoom’,
and using our computers’ cameras, we were able to chat and show and tell our
quilting and sewing projects. (See PowerPoint videos here from the Zoom
meetings: https://mqg2011.blogspot.com/2020/05/show-and-tell-video.html.)
Another new thing during the Covid years, as you all know, was surgical style protective masks, which we all wore to protect us from germs in the air. Hospitals, nursing facilities and stores literally ran out of masks, and it was discovered that cotton fabric was an excellent mask material, possibly the best available while we waited for manufacturers to catch up with demand. So, of course, with our vast fabric stashes, we all took to the sewing machines and made masks for anyone who asked! Nurses, nursing home patients, school kids and so many more wore our masks. I had a request from the daughter of a nurse just graduated from nursing school asking me to make her mom some masks because her hospital didn’t have any for her. As Covid restrictions were lessened we began meeting, occasionally, with our masks in place.
First without lunching, as you can’t eat with a mask! Eventually
(it’s now 2023) we’ve returned to our regular first and third Tuesdays for
sewing and lunch. Our group has changed
a bit: we have new members Becky, Holly, Pat C. and Pat C. And some members have moved to their Florida
homes year round, Linda D., Joy and Arlene.
Now I must mention that our time sewing at Linda’s condo came to an end early in 2024. Donna did a little research and found us a new meeting place. She contacted Jeanne, who had worked at Quiltfabric.com and quilted for our group occasionally, and was now Store Manager at Quilters Quest in Downers Grove. Jeanne and the entire staff welcomed our group to the Quilters Quest classroom, and now we meet there on the first and third Tuesdays of each month!
During our time quilting at the condo, we’ve been able to donate
many quilts to several needy organizations.
We’ve made some wonderful friends and lost a few (RIP MaryLou B., Sue M.,
MaryLou K. and Jan). A few of our original group remain, and so many new
quilters have joined our circle of friends!
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