At long last our Maker’s Day quilt is in its forever home, wrapping its owner in the best kind of hug, a Quilty hug!

The quilt that began its journey as our guild participating in the Makers Day festivities of 2019 in the Monmouth County Library Headquarters where 86 children designed “quilt” blocks with construction paper pieces and our members subsequently took those blocks and recreated them in fabric, is finally home! I had the pleasure of presenting it to Brian Sullivan at a Boy Scout event honoring him. Brian served in the Army from 1987-1990 and was called back in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm, where his unit became stranded in the desert outside Kuwait and was not rescued until after the ground war was over. Brian continued serving back at home in a leadership role in the Boy Scouts of Monmouth County and currently volunteers at a local hospital as part of a Veterans organization. A fitting recipient for a quilt crafted by youth in his home county, Brian was very grateful and moved. He was eager to get home and look at the binder filled with information about how the entire process came about.

This was a long time in the making and the gifting. No one would have predicted that a global pandemic would literally shut the world down when this idea we had was formulated. We went into Makers Day looking to garner interest in quilting from both the youth and the community, as membership in our own guild was waning. While we didn’t exactly accomplish that at Makers Day, the pandemic, in an odd way, managed to increase our membership as the community was locked down and an interest in sewing and quilting was born out of mask making! Go figure!

Many thanks to each and every member who participated in this project. Special thanks to Deb Hunter, whose brainchild this was and who worked out every minute detail right down to the chronicle she created to accompany the quilt.

And that’s a quilt wrap!

On a side note, after I gave my little speech about the guild, our community involvement and this quilt, the quilt was presented to Brian. He unfolded it and held it up for everyone to see and my six year old great nephew, who is part of the Boy Scout troop, shouted out “I give that an A+!!!” Thanks for the affirmation Jackson!