I am so excited! My tremendously talented friend Wendy Hill has agreed to do a series of guest blog posts about a wonderful quilt project she’s been working on with children in her neighborhood during the quarantine/”COVID-times”. Over the past several months, she’s shared with me updates on this amazing project and I invited her to share with my tierneycreates blog readers. I hope the story of this project makes you smile as much as it made me smile.
Wendy Hill is a fiber artist and teacher who has written several art quilting books to include most recently Creative Quilt Challenges, cowritten with Pat Pease. She has a website Wendy Hill Quilt Artist and you can follow her current work and musings on Instagram @wendyquilter.
Quarantine Quilt Project: Life in the Time of Coronavirus
Part I: Once Upon A Time
This is the story of two neighbors who banded together when the state government ordered a lock down because of the first Global Pandemic in over 100 years.
The big wide world was suddenly narrowed down to one house each for the four young boys next door and for us, a retired couple.
We live on a quiet cul-de-sac of a street, in a woodsy area, and now our respective worlds are turned upside down.
“The Boys”, ages 2-8 years, explored the area around their house after finishing ‘school’.
With no fences and the houses close together, “The Boys” inevitably spilled over into our yard.
One day, it seemed, to them, a good idea to fill our birdbaths with dirt and make mud. “The Boys” cleaned up the mess and later dropped off an apology.
“Can you ever forgive us?” the note read.
There was nothing to forgive! “The Boys” were going stir crazy.
I sent an invitation to participate in “An Exchange”. I started with a drawing of a mouse, which looked a lot like a rat, and invited “The Boys” to add to the drawing. This drawing, plus two others, went back & forth until we had finished artworks.
Life during the pandemic meant one day blending into to the next, without much definition. But now, we waited to hear the patter of footsteps followed by the chime of the doorbell.
Likewise, I could hear “The Boys” squeal with delight when I rang their doorbell. It was exciting to open the door and see what The Boys left on the porch.
One day, I sent over a note which read “I have a bit of a crazy idea….”. I sent over a Big Bag of Fabric Scraps with instructions to fill up blank 8 1/2” by 11” pages with fabric pieces. Overlaps of fabric were okay but no gaps. I explained I’d sew the fabrics together to make “quilt blocks”.
If “The Boys” had fun, we could keep it up until we had enough to make something.
The mom replied “This sounds like a great idea!” and we were off.
The Boys had fun playing with color & texture, and they enjoyed seeing their fabric arrangements get transformed into blocks. As the number of blocks grew, they played with layouts on their floor. We agreed to make enough blocks for a quilt.
We were all building new pandemic memories and they would have a cuddly family quilt. Win-Win-Win!
I love this story. It did make me smile. Thank you!
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Glad you enjoyed it – thanks for stopping by 🙂
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Thank you. This experience brought a lot of smiles to all of us while adjusting to the pandemic.
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Oh my, what a delightful project! Wendy Hill must be an angel to these little boys. And their mama probably really loves her, too.
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I know! I loved hearing about it while it was in progress. Yes she is an angel 🙂
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The Boys parents were really happy with our Exchange. I like to say my “inner teacher” came out (as a retired public school teacher).
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Thank you Tierney and Wendy, your story has made me smile. To see such happiness on those young lads’ faces is wonderful.
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Glad it gave you a smile 🙂
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Their enthusiasm was infectious! We all were walking around with big smiles….
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What a wonderful project!
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I agree 🙂
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I agree- it’s been a wonderful project! The quilt is going to The Boys and family this week.
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Ah, exciting, can’t wait to see how it turned out! And secretly wondering whether you plan to continue these creative collaborations. 😉
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Thanks so much I can’t wait either 🙂
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What a wonderful way to connect AND to entertain these boys…love it!
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It was! And much respect to the Mom who was dealing with 4 young boys in quarantine – ha!
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That’s the beauty of this project. My husband and I are separated from our family members too. So we got to connect with our neighbors and The Boys had something fun to do. And they will carry these memories into their adult lives and hopefully the quilt goes with him for many years to come.
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Absolutely!
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Oooh what naughty faces! A remarkable story
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I agree, glad you enjoyed it, more of the story to come in Wendy’s future guest posts 🙂
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Four boys under 8 years old— they are quite active!
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I am sure there is never a dull moment
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What a lovely story!
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Thanks for stopping by 🙂
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Thank you Tierney for giving me the space to share this story here. It’s a good story, I think.
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What a great thing to do for the children.
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I agree! Wendy is pretty awesome 🙂
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It started out as me giving The Boys something to do, but both my husband and I got so much in return.
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Children are such loving givers. The smallest of things make them happy, and they return so much love and joy.
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What a great idea – so neat that these families worked together to make this time a little more friendly and fun for each other! And thank you for sharing it!
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Thanks for stopping by and reading – it is a pretty cool story 😀
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You’ll see in future posts, how one thing led to another in the ways we shared events and helped each other out.
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What a clever and thoughtful thing to do not to mention a great way to use up all those scraps!
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It was and thanks for stopping by and reading between all that cooking 😀
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Why do scraps seem to multiply overnight? It’s the bottomless scrap bag, as the more we used, the level of scraps never seemed to go down!
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Hahaha you are so right!
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Wow, what a happy and creative story!!!! I look forward to seeing the creation from these young neighbors. 🙂
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Thanks for stopping by!
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The blocks are amazing! This is what “improv” piecing really is– with no preconceived ideas and no way to go “wrong”.
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Wonderful post! I loved reading about the bird bath.
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Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
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Bird bath– mud bath– all good, right?
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When it comes to boys, it all comes down to mud baths!
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Oh wow, what a great idea! The lads look like they’re having so much fun with that bag of scraps!
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They do! I am so enjoying this blog post (I get to read it first of course while I put it up on my site from Wendy’s document and photos) 🙂
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Lucky you, you’ll get a sneak peek at the finished quilt! I’m looking forward to seeing it 😁
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The Lads did have so much fun doing it! We had no idea when we started with the fabric scraps.
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