The Dogwood Village Quilt was a community quilt project at Dogwood Village in Orange, Virginia. From September-December 2022, I drive to Orange each Friday morning to sit, talk, and quilt with a small group of ladies: Barbara, Frances, Midge, and Mary Lou. There were several nurses who also worked with us on occasion: Lisa, Dennet, and April.

The goal was to make a quilt that could represent the entire group, but allow each person to share their own design sense. We settled on a star/flower template. It became clear very quickly that this group really had a talent for combining colors and patterns. They did the hard work of cutting the individual pieces, and I sewed them together with my machine.

Then we put the pieces together. The group was very skeptical when I insisted that we were going to make this quilt ‘old school,’ by hand quilting the entire thing and hand binding the edge. It was a real challenge! They deserve a lot of credit for sticking with me through the tedious hand-quilting and binding!

You can read a little more about the project in the local OC Bulletin blog.