Backroad Quilters

Last night was the first meeting of the new membership year for our local quilt group Backroad Quilters. My good friend Ann, who is also one of our co-presidents, brought my Shadowy Stars quilt with her to the meeting. You may remember that Ann broke her wrist just a couple days before I took my quilt over to her, and Ann spent most of the summer healing. I asked her to quilt the baptist fan pattern on it for me, and she did a beautiful job. I just love this quilt!

I have been the Treasurer for Backroads for the last three years. I really enjoyed that job, and it afforded me the opportunity to make a lot of new friends I might not have gotten to know otherwise. At the end of our membership year this past June, however, I decided it was time to step down and let another member assume that responsibility.

The members of Backroads gave me this very special and thoughtful gift last night as a thank you for the three years I served as Treasurer. This lovely tote bag was made and embroidered by my good friend Barbara, and the members collected some of their scraps and filled the tote plus another shopping bag with them and gave them to me. There's really nothing that could have pleased me more. You may recall that at our last meeting in June I bid on and won three big bags of scraps. I do love other peoples' scraps! Some of the scraps that went into my Orange Crush I won at last year's auction.

Barbara and Ann consulted on the materials used in the tote, and they did a perfect job of it. Barbara has made these totes before, and they are always tailored to the people who receive them, and they're always beautifully made. She lined the tote with a lovely fabric with pine needles and pine cones, which is so representative of our state. Since coming to Maine, I have been quite enamored of lots of things representing Maine, so the motifs and lining were perfect. The black capped chickadee is the state bird, and these sweet little birds appear often at the bird feeder in my backyard. The eastern white pine is the state tree, and the eastern white pine tassel and cone is the state flower.