Thanks for your measurements, Ladies...

Your quilt's measurements, that is. Thank you to all who have diligently measured the perimeters of their quilts brought to Show and Tell since September for the CQA/ACC Stitch Across Canada Challenge. We had a great Show and Tell at our February meeting- probably the largest yet this Guild year. Our Feb. total of 7,212 inches brought our final total to just under 40,000 inches for "the cause". Thank you all for participating. The grand total has now been posted on the CQA/ACC blog here and you will see that we made it to the Pacific coast with 87.5 inches to spare! How close is that!!

I want to offer special thanks to Marg W. who provided us a few laughs at our last meeting, when she measured not only the perimeter of her quilt, Ricrac Nines (104" square for a total perimeter of 416"), but also gave us a few more figures... The quilt contains 2,670 two inch squares, and 12,018 inches of seams. At 13 stitches per inch, that means the total stitch count is 156,234!!! These calculations were all done in good fun, but a moment's reflection makes one realize just how much work we put into our quilts. We're often asked "how long did that take?" And it's a difficult question to answer as most of us do not keep
track of time spent.... Most people who are not quilters have NO idea how much time and work go into a quilt... But certainly the time involved contributes greatly to the value of the quilt - in most cases likely more than the cost of all materials...
I recently discovered a new (to me) blog called timquilts.com  Tim Latimer lives in Lansing Michigan and is a certified florist, floral design instructor and avid gardener. He also collects vintage and antique quilt tops and finishes them, with the goal of preserving the fine art of hand quilting. I found one of his recent posts discussing the value or worth of hand quilting very interesting. It is well worth the read- you can find it here. I'm sure you all would enjoy seeing his fine hand quilting on his current project (a whole cloth quilt), and if you scroll down through earlier posts, you will see other quilting progress photos... WOW!!!  While you're there, another very worthwhile read is titled "Quilt Buyers Beware". You'll see it listed at the top of the sidebar. And don't miss the Quilt Gallery. His quilting is awesome!!!
Until next time.. keep those needles threaded!