You Belong: A Finished Quilt

Quilters pop up in unexpected places. My two quilty friends are both former co-workers, both of whom I sort of happened across as having the same hobby. The same is true for my school board where there are quilters tucked in every corner. This group of quilters sent a finished quilt to Quilts for Pulse after the shooting in Orlando, collected, assembled and quilted by a lovely women who works at our board office. 

When the Quebec mosque shooting happened, I was shaken. How could such a terrible thing happen to a group of people as they peacefully prayed? And how could this happen in Canada, where I have always felt it was safer for people to be themselves. Naive? Probably. Definitely.

Then I saw the call for quilt blocks by the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild asking for house blocks to show the members of the mosque, especially the victims' families, that they belong in Canada. And I felt like I could do some tiny action that would help. And so I put a call out to those same ladies who contributed Pulse blocks and in less than two weeks I had 35 blocks (counting the four I had already made) and I just had to whip up 7 more and then put it all together.

Here is the end result:

An eclectic, happy village of blocks. Aren't those apartments amazing? They were all made by C at The Edgy Perfectionist. 

And then I had to finish is using my stash because of the tight timelines and it turned out I had a whole bunch of pink for some reason. I was planning to go gender neutral but then what I had was what I had and I ended up really liking it. Pink is happy and friendly. And most of it is this sweet Bari J print that is just so lovely.

Very pink. The contrast between the two pinks is big here but it doesn't look that stark in real life.

I also used up bits of leftover binding, as it went well with the scrappy front, but made sure to only choose colours that looked good with the pink backing. I like that hot pink solid in the bottom right corner of this picture.

The quilt had a label put on and was mailed to Quebec all within three weeks of the call to action by the guild. I think it made us all feel a tiny bit better but what is most important is that the recipient(s) know(s) that she or he or they BELONG here in Canada. They are part of our community and of our Canadian fabric.