Scrappy Spools for Wendy Garner

Having a secret collaboration with quilting friends is one of life's great pleasures.  But in the case of my quilting group it means that one of our dear friends is leaving us for new adventures.  Such was the case for Wendy so we wanted to send her off with a quilt from all of us.  We learned about Wendy's plans on our group road trip to Boersma's on January 3rd, 2020.  We work fast!

We settled on "Spools 2" by Camille Roskelley of Thimble Blossoms.  We wanted a pattern that could be planned but very scrappy.  Wendy sews almost exclusively from scraps that people have given her.  She makes beautiful string quilts and gives them away to anyone who admires them or needs a quilt to snuggle up in. This seemed like the perfect quilt to give her and we decided that we should raid our scrap bins to make our spools.  Although the pattern suggests three different fabrics for the thread section, we did our own thing.   Some followed the directions and used three equal strips, but others used four, five or six.  It didn't matter.  Melissa had enough of the Kona white for the background so we distributed that and got to sewing.  The only rule was to use the same greyish fabric for the spool ends on our own set of blocks.  That would be one way to tell who made which blocks and help keep the quilt somewhat unified. 

It was less than two weeks until I had all the spools collected.  Besides the completed spools, everyone contributed squares and strips for the pieced sashing and binding.  It took about a week to get it all put together.  I fiddled with the layout for quite awhile trying different schemes and arrangements and finally decided that every sewer should have a block surrounding the heart.

Starting in the top left corner with the green spool and going clockwise we have blocks by Monique Beikman - green, Sharla Averett - black and red, Kay Card - pink, Donna Spackman - turquoise, Ardyth Graham - blue, Jan Bracha - orange, Melissa Hunter - pink, Jessica Lancaster - yellow (and the heart too).  Now the game is to find all the spools made by each quilter by looking at the spool ends! And for bonus points, figure out who got to make six spools (one more than everyone else).

Ardyth and I went on a road trip to find fabric for the back.  We liked this print because it looked like spools all standing around and it came in lots of different colors.  It was hard to decide but we finally settled on this red.  Sometimes choosing a backing fabric can be so hard because you want to pick the "right" one amongst the hundreds of options.

Carrie Barrow, a long arm quilter in Boise, Idaho agreed to do the quilting for us.  Carrie moved from Tualatin several years ago but knows Wendy well.  I was able to send the quilt to Carrie with Kay who had been visiting from Utah near the end of January.   She dropped it off to Carrie and chose the fabulous quilting design called Loose Threads.  Carrie brought it back to me on March 6th.  I quickly put the binding on and we delivered it to Wendy on March 9, 2020 just before gathering in groups became a thing of the past and days before Wendy was on the road again.  Wendy was appropriately surprised and loved it!

Before moving to Tualatin with her five children during the summer of 1995, Wendy had lived in Africa and the Philippines and had traveled extensively.  She raised her children and taught elementary school for ten years at the American School of Mogadishu and the International School of Manila.  Her oldest three graduated from there but came with her to Tualatin and attended local colleges while preparing to leave on missions.

Wendy continued her teaching career at Oak Grove Elementary in Milwaukee, Oregon where she taught 1st grade for 12 of her 14 years there.  She abruptly retired in the fall of 2012 to take care of her dad full time.  He was no longer able to manage on his own but still wanted to be home on his three acres to garden and putter around.   Wendy became his full time caregiver.   For the first five years they went to Ontario, Oregon during the spring and summer and came back to Tualatin after the garden was harvested.  But that stopped being fun because her dad just couldn't garden anymore.  Wendy tenderly cared for him as he continued to fade away and died at her home after Christmas last year.

Wendy wasted no time in getting on with her plans.  Her goal has always been to own no more stuff than can fit in her truck so she got busy giving away her excess.  Her youngest son had been living with her for several years and intended to buy the house.  What a good plan, because now she has a landing spot whenever she is in Tualatin.  In the year since then she has been all over the country, visiting her sisters and children, and most importantly, her seven grandchildren which is her favorite thing of all. 

She is currently awaiting a mission call.  Because she will go and do anything (except work in an office), the pandemic means her call is on hold.  So she is keeping busy sewing, reading, walking the dog and doing things that need to be done in and around the house.  She wishes she could be singing in a choir somewhere but no one is doing that these days.

Wendy is the kind of person everyone should have for a friend.  She is smart, energetic, funny, giving, kind, grateful, spiritual, willing, and more.

Wendy, Melissa, Ardyth, Jessica and me.