Serve Others - Part II

The Serve Others banner is together, hung and dedicated! I was still frantically sewing the binding on at 1 PM yesterday and I needed to hang it before 6 PM.

Here is how it looked at 2:30.

A closeup of the banner:

The members of the group traced their hands on Heat and Bond and fused the hands onto a background square. After I sandwiched the squares with batting and batting, and serged around them, they all quilted around their hands with 6 strands of embroidery floss. They added trims, sequins, beads, or buttons to make the blocks their own. I then added the sashing, and the borders with the words. The young women in the group were amazed at how wonderful their blocks looked, set into a quilt.

I had such fun, helping them learn something about the needle arts, while creating this. Perhaps some of them will do more, later.

Lessons learned:
1. When working with young people assume that it will take twice as long as you expect, then double that number.
2. These young people were at an age when "can't" hasn't fully entered their vocabulary, so they would gamely try anything I asked them to do.
3. Modern 15 yo's do not know how to sew on a button.

I hope they give me the opportunity to make another banner with them. The 100th anniversary of CGIT is in 2015. Maybe if we start the banner in September...