St. Martha Fall Festival

Nativity paper-pieced quilt – part one

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Our Prayer Quilt Ministry is getting ready again for the St. Martha’s Catholic Church parish festival. This year it will be held on Saturday, October 3. Along with lots of crafty items for sale, our group has just started working on a special surprise for the silent auction.

The conception of the project began when Lynn brought to Noreen, our resident “Fabric Whisperer,” an intricate paper-pieced quilt pattern called, Advent Nativity, on the Paper Panache website. It is a stunning quilt! But it would be a HUGE project for just one person. I could almost see the wheels turning inside Noreen’s head at the possibilities. It wasn’t long before she was organizing a group of us to make the quilt. Certainly seven pairs of hands could pull this quilt together. With Noreen at the helm there was Sally, Liz, Helaine, Lynn, Clara and myself volunteering for the assignment. No small task, Noreen enlarged the quilt by 190% and put together the quilt sections with fabric pieces into zip lock bags. When finished, the quilt will be 60 inches wide. I don’t recall the length.

Last week, seven of us took home instructions and fabric pieces for a small section of the quilt. I was given the Kneeling King. It had been five years since I’d tackled a paper-pieced project, so I was a little nervous. I have to confess, in the privacy of my sewing room last week, I said a bad word a few times after ripping out the same two small fabric pieces three times.

On Wednesday, everyone brought their paper-pieced assignments in and laid them out. There were lots of confessions of frustration, but you couldn’t tell by wonderful results. I was very impressed! This week will be easier!

Three more weeks of sewing assignments and then the task of sewing the small sections together. This week I was assigned a Shepherd.

Tell me what you think?

Check out Martha’s Quilters Parish Festival Booth!

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This Saturday, October 11, is St. Martha’s Catholic Church’s Parish Festival held from noon to 8 pm at the new church campus. Our very own Martha’s Quilters will have an awesome booth at the festival so come on out and support the crafty ladies with a purchase. The past few months we have been using our vast array of talents and treasures to create unique items that can be purchased for decorating, warming yourself around the fire this winter, and Christmas gift giving! How about a cute rug for your mug? While you are browsing check out our seasonal table runners, wine gift bags, adorable rolling pin covers, as well as fabric shoe bags for travelers. We also have lovely crocheted afghans and lots of one-of-a kind quilts. And don’t forget to check out our designer fabric checkbook covers and candle pads and all kinds of knitted items. Hope to see you there!

Talented ladies sew for St. Martha Fall Festival

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I can’t recall how many years I’ve been spending time with some amazing ladies at our church, but Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. Generally, we are all about creating lap-sized quilts that are blessed by one of our awesome priests for the ill in our parish. The ladies of St. Martha’s Prayer Quilt Ministry have also been sewing and stitching and creating for the past several months for this year’s St. Martha Fall Festival. It is being held this Saturday, October 26, from 3 to 8 p.m. at our new church campus. Come visit our booth where we will have such handcrafted items for sale as machine-pieced and tied lap quilts, wine gift bags and pillow cases made by Angela, tooth fairy pillows, receiving blankets and bibs, Christmas ornaments, seasonal table runners, religious bookmarks, lovely crocheted throws by Gina and Sid, Debbie’s delightful bun warmers, headbands, awesome knitted and crocheted items by Jacqueline, doll clothes made lovingly by our crafty Helaine out of St. Martha School uniform fabric, Sally’s adorable child’s tote bags, a couple of Cabbage Patch dolls decked out in St. Martha School uniforms, cute little St. Martha School purses and so much more. All monies benefit our prayer quilt ministry!