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Sister's Quilt

by Stephonie
(Iowa)

A lady in our church congregation thought it would be nice to have a Sisters Quilt. Every lady who wanted to participate would make 10-inch quilt blocks, one for every participant. Then they would be turned in and a couple of women would embroider the name of the woman who made the block.

I had never made quilt blocks and thought this would be a good opportunity to try. From my 7th grade home economics class, I remembered that I should pre-wash my fabric. So I did. I had no problems with the pretty blue and white fabric.

Months later I received 20 something blocks and I decided to turn it into a king-size quilt. Every block was different but the coordinating colors were blue and white. I picked out some stunning blue batik for the binding and to sew between the blocks to make it king-size.

Because it was a jelly roll I wasn't able to wash the fabric. We were almost done with the quilt and were ironing the last row before sewing it onto the rest of the quilt. One of my nephews came running in through past us as my mother was doing the ironing. The ironing board was lightly bumped and the spray bottle of water on the board was knocked over and quickly leaked. My mother swiped it with her hand to brush the water off and blue went right across a white patch on the quilt block it had been sewn to.

I was devastated!

We halted progress on the quilt and did some water testing on all the different fabrics in the jelly roll. Every one bled badly.

Then we did some other testing. I don't remember what all was used but I remember the test piece of fabric that had been soaked in the cup of apple cider vinegar did not bleed.

We ended up finishing the quilt and we had a tying party with about 8 people tying the quilt off in just about an hour. The quilt was rolled up and I brought it home.

It sits rolled up at the bottom of my bedroom closet. The beautiful quilt made by so many lovely women stitched together by myself and my mother and then tied by many more family members sits languishing because it bled so badly.

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