If you’ve been around the Relief Sale for more than a few years, you’ve heard about the “crazy” ladies. It’s a group of four women from the Wayne County area who make it their goal to piece, quilt, bind and donate a top-notch quilt at our annual Relief Sale.
No, it’s not about pride. It’s about the fun and fellowship of picking out the fabrics, selecting the pattern, the piecing and quilting, and the goal of each year’s quilt: to bring glory to God and raise as much money as possible for the Mennonite Central Committee through the Ohio Relief Sale.
The quality of the work is no joke. This truly is an All-Star Team of Quilters! Each of these ladies is an excellent craftswoman in her own right and contributes her own special talent to creating the quilt. We won’t tell you who does what, but each year’s quilt is a combination of precision piecing, exciting current colors, the neatest applique you’ll ever find, and thousands of evenly-spaced stitches of hand-quilting. Whenever their yearly quilt is up for auction, the oohhs and aahhs of the Relief Sale’s quilt-savvy audience provide the evidence. This is The Quilt!
The Relief Sale thanks Pat Falb, Ruth Steiner, Evelyn White and Laurel Horst for their dedication and hard work over the years.
The Scoop on this year’s Quilt
This year’s quilt is pictured here and is entitled “Jeweled Anniversary Rings”. All fabrics used in this quilt (except the background and backing) were use in previous quilt projects these four women have made. This quilt includes 1,358 pieces of fabric to make the jeweled rings and 253 pieces of fabric for the applique on the borders. It took the entire month of February to piece and applique the quilt. They began quilting February 24th and finished on June 2nd. 784 hours were spent hand quilting the quilt and approximately 700 yards of thread was used.