Pati Fried

You may remember me mentioning in a post last February about visiting my hometown in Iowa for a Quilt Fest fundraising event Mt. Ayr Aquatic Center Fundraiser . It all started when a high school classmate of mine contacted me for advice. She was planning a Quilt Fest as a fundraising effort for building a new community pool for my home town. “I don’t quilt, but I figured it would be like a Scrapfest, which I know how to set up…”,  Jodie said. Well – quilters, hometown, high school friend, that is pretty much all it took to get me booked on a flight home for the event!

In the planning stages, Jodie and I worked up an idea of creating 2 – yes 2 – quilts to be made by the community for even more fundraising activity at an auction later on this year. This is the story of the adult quilt. (Kids quilt to come….)

Blocks were created by those that attended the Quilt Fest, (and a few that sent them in from as far as Texas!). We set up a station for making the blocks and one by one added them to a design wall as the day went by. It was such fun meeting other quilters from my home town, catching up with old friends and creating something to help with the fundraising efforts. What a great day!

The top was finished yesterday and put in the mail to be quilted. I thought I would share the journey it took to get here.

Jodie Geist, Pati Fried, Susie Cantanzaretti, LeAnn Keenan.

Never in a million years would I have thought I would be quilting with high school friends! Jodie organized the Quilt Fest, Susie was an attendee and LeAnn helped me the entire day with the community quilt projects. Not shown is Sue Larsen, who just happened to be my first art teacher in high school – a total inspirations to me. So great to spend the day with such great women.

Learning to make a Tshirt Quilt

Joyce Franklin of Quilts and Other Notions taught a popular class on Tshirt Quilts. BTW, if you are ever in Creston, Iowa… her shop is AMAZING!

Quilters chose from 2 blocks – Nine Patch and Variable Star. We used muslin as the background and lots of scrappy blues.

Now it is off to longarmer, Katie Hayse of Mt. Ayr, who was wonderful enough to offer to quilt it for us. Thanks Katie!

Let’s hope it raises lots of money for the Aquatic Center! This was a true community effort from beginning to end. My favorite kind of project! Thanks to everyone involved. Let the bidding begin!