SNO-CRUSH: Avalanche Quilters

Sno-Crush is over,  but I want to show this quilt made by the Avalanche Quilters, a group of women that quilted for many years in and around Avalanche.  Over the years, the members changed, but the method was always the same.  Anyone could join, no matter what her quilting skills were, and we made every decision by group consensus.  What pattern to make, what materials?  We'd all contribute from our closets and cupboards.

Everyone sewed pieces together and made blocks.  We would lay the blocks out on the floor, and everyone stood around it, looking, then rearranging.  The rest of the group either approved, or suggested another way.  When everyone was finally agreed,  we sewed it in teams, and we marked the quilt. Then we  put it in on our frame, and everyone quilted.  During this process, which sometimes took months,  we had many ancillary discussions, deepened friendships, counseled  our marriages,  distributed eggs, and excess garden produce, planned parties, and childcare,  discussed politics, and
buttoned our lips about what we said at quilting.  We also  found we all had distinct opinions about color and design, and we learned how to express our ideas, how to negotiate, and to compromise.  In the end, each quilt is a very uneven quality. None of our group quilts looks like a quilt that any one of us would have made.  But each one is a shining, imperfect beauty.

The last day of the quilting, we embroidered our names around the edge of the quilt, holding it upside  down across our laps.  Then everyone's name went into a hat, and we drew out the name of a winner.

This quilt is called House Top, and styled after the Gee's Bend Quilts.  It is wool scrap, no batting, with a flannel back.  The edge is black cotton velveteen.  The gray wool squares are a silk and wool combination.  This is the second time the quilt has been shown, and it still has some pins in two squares.  It's not finished!  That is a hopeful sign to me, that there are still quilting days ahead.