1,000 comfort quilts!

Some of the Gig Harbor Comfort Quilters celebrated yesterday
to mark finishing our 1,000th quilt to donate to cancer patients.

Party time for the Gig Harbor

Comfort Quilters!

We put the final stitches in Quilt No. 1,000 this month. That's 1,000 quilts donated to cancer patients since Carol Arnold started the project in 2002. That's about 100 quilts a year, or two quilts a week. That's a lot of LOVING STITCHES.

Comfort Quilt founder Carol Arnold with Quilt 1,000.

Here's Carol in front of Quilt 1,000 during our party yesterday at Harbor Quilts, where we meet every month to sew colorful lap-size quilts for cancer patients -- mainly breast cancer patients. (Carol started the project after she completed treatment for breast cancer.)

Carol kept trying to turn the focus back on the group, but she deserves special attention for plugging along month after month for almost 10 years, collecting fabric donations, overseeing the work sessions, and delivering the finished quilts.

We had scones and bubbly ... and chicken noodle soup, homemade bread, fudge, brownies, cookies, chocolates ... flowers and balloons.

We worked, too. A lot of little patches went through those machines yesterday. There was a lot of laughter, which is why I'm so happy I found this group of wonderful ladies when I moved here a few years ago. They got me through my first dark and rainy winter in the Northwest and now I SO look forward to our monthly sewing sessions.

Here are some of the quilt tops coming together on the design wall yesterday:

The gorgeous quilt below was pieced by a volunteer at home and then passed on to another volunteer recently for the quilting. There was much ooohing and ahhhing over it.

Back story on Quilt 1,000:

Below is the unfinished quilt having a photo shoot on my front porch last year, although I didn't know at the time it was going to be the milestone one. We had been piecing the blocks during a meeting last summer and I volunteered to take it home to finish sewing the blocks together and put on borders. (It was purely selfish -- I loved the colors so much I didn't want to wait another month to see it again.) After that, it took awhile to work its way through the system for the long-arm quilting, binding and label, but this month it was finally done and ready to be donated.



Here are the rest of my blog posts about the Comfort Quilters, in case you want to see more beautiful colors and designs and learn more about our group, which meets the fourth Tuesday of the month at Harbor Quilts on Pioneer and welcomes donations of fabric and new volunteers. Enjoy!

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-comfort-quilts-come-together.html

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/10/cancer-comfort-quilts-on-earthbongo.html

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/06/cancer-quilt-spirals-and-moon-snail.html

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/04/cancer-comfort-quilt-day.html

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/01/comfort-quilt-day.html

http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2010/04/quilts-for-breast-cancer-patients.html

Label on back of Quilt 1,000:
"Thinking of you. Gig Harbor Comfort Quilters. 2012"

Have a colorful day!