may09_01

This is a story of coincidence or GOD's intervention. You decide!

One Sunday in February, Amanda Vidal approached my wife Joy to ask her if she would
be her mentor for a senior English project. Amanda said she had to pick a project and
find someone to Mentor her to get the project completed. Amanda had chosen to do a
quilt for her project and had found the direction for the one she liked in a quilting
magazine. She knew Joy was a Tamarack Quilting artist, so she thought she'd be the
perfect one to ask to be her mentor.

Joy agreed to help her out so they made plans to begin the project. First, Amanda had
to copy the direction and give the copy to Joy so she could layout the steps they would
follow to complete the project. Their first job was to obtain the materials Amanda wanted
to use in the quilt, so Joy met Amanda downtown at the Needle Basket Quilt shop after
school one afternoon. Amanda only found two materials she liked but since she needed
six different colors Joy said she'd take her down to Summersville to The Quilt Shoppe the
next weekend.

The next session took place down in Summersville where Joy, Amanda and Amanda's
mother found the rest of the materials she needed to make her quilt. Amanda's
homework from the trip was to wash all her fabrics. Arrangements were also made for
Amanda to come to Joy's quilt studio for a work day. (click photos to enlarge)

Amanda's first lessons involved using a rotary cutter to cut the strips to form the quilt
blocks. Next she had to learn how to sew the cut pieces together, but before she got
started, her sewing machine died. Luckily Joy has an extra one in her studio just for
cases like this.

Amanda completed two blocks before she had to leave. But when joy and Amanda
compared the blocks to the picture in the magazine they noticed they did not look alike.
They should have looked like the ones in the third photo. So Joy suggested they both
go back and read the directions very carefully to see what they may have done wrong.

Joy read and reread the directions and they had done everything the magazine said.
So she was kinds of worried that they wouldn't get it to work right, although the quilt
would still look nice. Well, here's where GOD ( or coincidence) stepped in . I started
recording a Fons & Porter Quilt Show every weekend for Joy and when we sat down to
watch that Saturday's show, they were making the exact quilt that Amanda and Joy
were trying to make, so Joy started to take notes and she found the point in the
directions where the magazine article was incorrect. Hurray, they could now make the
corrections without loosing a lot of their work, so she called Amanda and told her how
to change what she was doing wrong. In the mean time, I accidentally erased the taped
show and we haven't seen it again on the air!! Isn't that strange that they just
happened to show that show when we needed it!!

Now, the top was finished, but the hard part was about to begin. Now the quilt had to
be quilted, and time was running out because the project was due by the end of the
month and that was only two weeks away. So I volunteered to save the day and I taught
Amanda how to quilt her quilt on a computerized quilting machine called a Statler
Stitcher. You see, I not only edit this newsletter, but I also run a Computerized Quilting
Machine for Joy's business - Quilts of Joy!. First I showed and helped Amanda and
Joy put the quilt on the machine - this took about 20 minutes. Then I helped her pick a
pattern for the computer to use to quilt the quilt. Amanda then started the machine and
then she and Joy watched the computer do in one hour what it would have taken a
week to do by hand.

In the photos above you see Joy and Amanda pinning the quilt onto the canvas
carriers the machine uses to stretch the quilt. In the second phot, Amanda and Joy are
quilting the quilt. And in the third photo Joy is showing Amanda how to trim the finished
quilt so she can put on the final Binding. In the photo below Amanda holds up her
trimmed quilted quilt. and in the last photo she is putting the binding on the edges of
the quilt.

Amanda finished hand sewing the binding on her quilt at home and had her project
completed by the assignment dead line. Her teacher was very impressed, because
she thought that Amanda was just going to make a quilt block, not a whole quilt.
Congratulations Amanda for a project well done.