April 2016 – Q^ – Fauquier County Quilters

The theme for this year was Q^ (or Quilt Up)

Q^ is a combination of the Five Hands Theory of Giving:
Handmade (made using your hands, talent and materials available)
Second Hand (purchased used, not new)
Hand me down (given to a loved one to get more use of)
Hand in Hand (love, community, doing what you love to do with people you love to do it
with)
Helping Hand (charity, giving a hand up)

Pieced together with the three R’s:
Reduce (only purchase what you need, and hand down what you don’t use)
Reuse (find alternative uses for things that have been cast off)
Recycle (don’t put that in the landfill – recycle it!)

In keeping with the theme, the sample projects included denim quilts and bags, t-shirt quilts, quilts, wall hangings, and even an apron made from ties, and a memorabilia quilt from baby clothes.

There were demonstrations on working with ties, t-shirt quilts and making bags from t-shirts and pillowcases.

On Saturday morning we had a “fire sale” of items that members no longer wanted or needed. All unsold items were donated to Goodwill.

We had a “Trash to Treasure” Challenge in which participants were each given a bag of “trash” items to turn into a “treasure.” Here are some before and after photos.

And one ingenious late entry for which we no longer have the before photo:

One highlight of the Retreat was presenting a quilt to Debbie from Best Western who has worked tirelessly to make our retreats go smoothly. We all made blocks last years, and the quilt was put together and quilted over the winter.