Georgetown Quilts of Valor ... now Georgetown Quilts of Love

Welcome to our new administrator for this page; Judy will be adding posts for the veterans quilts that we have been making.

Remember, everyone; this page is closed to the public and only accessible to members of our Georgetown quilters group. That is to allow privacy for the veterans and members of their family who might not want their photos on public display. Of course if any of you want to copy and print the quilt photos to share with your family or friends, that's fine, as long as you crop out any personal photos.

2018

April 24, 2018

Richard Johnson

Dick and Barbara, both grew up in Georgetown. Dick was in the Navy during WWII.  This quilt looked spectacular today, the light was very good in the room, both loved it and they marvel that we can put this together.  I think that when we saw these two tops at the church on the grey - or beige floor, they didn't look perky.  This is a lovely quilt.

💟 February 14, 2018 💟

Stuart Scranton

Mr. Scranton served in the Air Force for 20 years, is 85 years old, and has been living in Georgetown for awhile at Parker River Landing.  His wife died about four years ago, and he met a woman who was also widowed and lived in the complex, and they are companions now.  No tea and crumpets or wine, but a pleasant visit.

February 13, 2018

Bob and Pat Gorton have resided on Brook Street in Georgetown for 55 years.  He served in the Army from 1952-55, is active on the Camp Dennison committee, and loves Bing Crosby. He and his wife thought the lap robe was beautiful and were amazed at what we do. They thanked us, and donated $20 to our cause.

Using long strips to form pieces that will becomes small squares
to be sewn together to form a block
before deciding how best to put the blocks together
to make the quilt...

August 14, 2017

The Georgetown Quilters group has also, this past week, presented a quilt honoring our veterans to the Georgetown Senior Center, now located in Perley School.

July 30, 2017

One of our members, Cathy, is making carriers for walkers to assist elderly veterans ... they are a hit at the Bedford site~ and no wonder!

Here is Cathy's dad with the prototype walker caddy! 

July 28, 2017

Two more quilts awarded this week: Earl Johnston and Earl Hunt <3

July 3, 2017

Another quilt delivered today - Navy veteran Frank Phillips, lifelong resident of town, was presented his quilt by Terry, Betty, Judy (behind the camera) and Beverly. 

June 16, 2017

Veteran Al Miller received his quilt this week. Betty, Beverly, Pam and Judy were happy to present it at the Georgetown Senior Center.

June 2, 2017

Another local veteran received his Quilt of Valor today ... Dr. Philip Rosene was honored and thanked for his service by Bev and Terry.

May 30, 2017

Three more quilts have been presented to local veterans this month: Beverly went to visit Byron in the hospital and presented the quilt while members of his family were with him.

Byron's quilt of valor

Sue, Bea and Beverly were able to
present this quilt of valor
 to Alex Bruce, a WWII veteran, age 93.

May 15 2017

We have finished up quite a few quilts in this past month, and our contact quilter, Bev, has been busy sending out letters to potential recipients. The most recent award was a gentleman  who lived in Georgetown for many years; his name is Roger and he wears his hat proudly. His wife and he wandered into one of our sewing sessions at the new Georgetown Senior Center and admired all of the quilts waiting for labels, and said she liked this one the best, and so it was immediately put aside for the couple.

Bev and Terry presented this quilt to the couple at the senior center.

April 13 2017

A thirteen month long hiatus? No, we've been meeting ... I just haven't had photos to post. I'll catch up as best I can here.

First update: we changed our identity sometime in the past year ... we now call ourselves the Georgetown Quilters, or the Renegade Quilters ... because we are not adhering to the requirements of the national quilt of valor site; that means, we provide our own fabric, choose our own sizes, and present the quilts to our own town veterans. It works for us.

During that year, we've also gained a few new members ... welcome, Bea, Sue, Darcie, Cathy ... and as our group grows, so does the number of different quilt projects we are working on ... in a brand new space! More below...

Betty had seen a video of blending star blocks of mixed sizes together, and this design is one of the resulting quilts. It will measure approximately 50 x 50 when joined, backed, batted, quilted and bound. 

This is just one potential arrangement of four blocks that Judy pieced and Terry played with. They could also be corner blocks around another medallion center. 

And, we love our new meeting space at the Georgetown Senior Citizens Center - it's just two doors south of Quilters' Quarters, at the old Perley School. Clean floors with tiles measuring exactly 12" is a quilter's dream!

March 13 2016

 We met this past Monday and brought our blocks together to arrange them in a pattern. We have thirty blocks and know we need five more; these are smaller blocks than we've used before, so we may be adding some borders at the outside if we think the quilt is too small for a recipient who uses a wheelchair. We're "quilting as we go" and joining the blocks together with front and back strips as we did in the previous quilt, and chose our previous 'common' fabric for the back of this quilt. Here is a photo of the blocks set without the strips; my row with the strips is below as well.

The individual blocks arranged
on a flannel quilt wall

Row Five blocks,
with joining strips attached

The back of row five

February 20, 2016

Where have the weeks gone? We're working on our next Q of V, using primary red white and blue in various six inch block patterns. When we bring the blocks together at our next meeting, we'll choose a common fabric for 'coping strips' to unify the blocks, then take them home to 'quilt as we go.'  Here's my first for this quilt:

November 27, 2015

Tomorrow the lap quilt we finished this month will be presented to a Georgetown resident for many years, as Beverly will travel to meet him and daughter in a nearby town. 

QUILT PRESENTED TO ARMAND SOUCY
BY BEVERLY KNAPP OF THE
GEORGETOWN QUILTERS GROUP

Somewhat similar to the potholder quilt we'd made, this one was a 'quilt as you go' style, with each of the seven of us making five blocks of our own chosen pattern, but using one consistent fabric somewhere in each block. This common fabric helped unify the design. We also used a different method for joining the blocks together, having watched a video found by Renee on line and making the job easier than the hand stitching on the potholder quilt. This one is the quickest we've finished yet, and all agree that it is a very good looking quilt!

November 4, 2015

 Oh, I have not updated this page in quite a while! Let me backtrack a bit ...

Just before Christmas of 2014, we delivered our first two finished quilts to Karyn, who works for the post office here in town. She is the mother of a son and daughter who each have served in recent years, seeing combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. What was most wonderful is that the quilts, which had taken so long to return to us from the long arm finisher, were here just in time for Karyn and her son and daughter to meet together for the holidays, and Karyn was able to spend time with them and carry and deliver the quilts to them, and take this wonderful photo to share with us!

Karyn's son and daughter enjoy their quilts!

and several months later...

We delivered our third quilt, the potholder quilt, to a beloved army retiree who has been our town's barber for the past fifty years! Gino, as he is called by his man patrons, has cut the hair for generations of Georgetown families, and is a favorite of military, police and other service individuals. I have a photo of Gino and his quilt somewhere and as soon as I find it, I will add it to this post!

GINO is a legend in Georgetown as the
barber that all military men and state police
officers visit regularly. His shop is a true
shrine to all of the servicemen. 

1/28/2015

Our third Quilt of Valor, done as a Pot Holder quilt, is finished and will be on display at the Georgetown Peabody Library for the months of February and March.  Quilt of Valor group members will be at the library during the reception for the quilts (and the birthday celebration of our library's early founder, George Peabody) on Saturday, February 7th, from 9 am to 1 pm. Come and see the finished quilt!

12/23/2014

It has taken us nearly a full year to bring this project to fruition, but through the months and the collaborative meetings, we have learned so much and shared even more. It's now our pleasure to present these Quilts of Valor to those who have earned so much more than a simple quilt. 

We want you to know that they were created, designed and sewn with care and appreciation for those who gave up time with family, friends and  loved ones to stand in the face of danger with courage, strength, and the conviction that our way of life is one worth defending and preserving. We can never replace those hours, days, months and years of dedicated service away from home; we can only express our admiration, understanding and respect for what was done and given for the benefit of our country, our people, and our way of life. The words thank you are offered honestly with the knowledge that, though they can never be enough alone, they do express what so many people hold in their hearts for our heroes.

Lovingly made in Massachusetts, and respectfully offered,

 Georgetown Quilts of Valor:

Betty

Beverly

Judy

Pam

Renee

Terry

Update 12/22/2014

We will deliver our first two Quilts of Valor tomorrow afternoon. We know a woman who has both a son and daughter who have seen combat overseas and they are going to her for them, when they return home.

Update 12/11/2014

Our group has finished enough potholders to make a five foot by six foot quilt, and so today we met and arranged the blocks on a quilt wall (it's a simple piece of white flannel to which fabric adheres well ... unless it's heavy fabric or joined blocks.)  Here's the arrangement we're starting with. We've each taken a row and will be blind stitching the blocks of that row together, and then meeting again to decide whether the hand stitching is strong enough. If not, we'll add something in the way of decorative strengthening by machine. It was fun making our own blocks, quilting and all!

Yes, there's a block missing at the lower left corner.
It will be a star block similar to the other three.
Six quilters, six distinctly different styles. I like it!

And here is the label that our friend Darcie made on her fifteen year old embroidery machine, a Baby-Lock. 

Update 11/11/2014

Rick and I are just back from visiting our nephew Stephen's grave in Beverly, MA. We attended the Veteran's Day ceremony at the monuments downtown, and I am returning to work on our third quilt of valor.

This one will be done in potholder style, as those during the Civil War were done. The blocks will be backed, quilted and bound individually as they are made, eliminating the need for a long arm back and quilting. Each of us will bring eight 12 inch blocks to the table, and decide how to join our separate pieces to form a quilt. 

A traditional Civil War block of four square,
in faded colors honoring the past.
It may not make it into this QOV quilt.

Here's a photo on my first block, with more to come this weekend after we meet. We'll be here at Quilters' Quarters on Thursday, 11/13/2014 at 10 am.

Civil War Era Potholder Quilt Blocks

Pairs, dozens, scores and hundreds of women in various communities, both in the Union and the Confederacy, came together to offer comfort and warmth to the soldiers who were fighting the war. They made quilts.  Hundreds and more hundreds and literally thousands of quilts were made and distributed to the men.

“Just a very few of the quilts made for soldiers have survived. As you can imagine these quilts got a great deal of wear and probably did not seem worth saving after the war. Many completely wore out. If you add to that the fact that many soldiers were buried in their quilts you can understand why these quilts are extremely rare today.”

(http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/civilwar.htm)

Snoopy says thanks to our Veterans

closeup of thankful messages

a bit of sunshine on the backs

Potholder Quilts are among the rarest of surviving nineteenth century quilts.  These were quilts made by groups of women who might come to a rally or meeting, bring home fabric, make blocks either by hand or machine, and then bring the blocks back to be sewn together with others to form a soldiers’ quilt. This is the style of quilt for which I am creating this pattern.

A potholder square consists of a front, a back, and batting. The binding for the square is formed from the back piece of fabric’s over-sized edges. The front fabric is cut one inch smaller than the back on all four sides. The batting is cut to match the front, which is the size of the resulting square.  For a twelve inch block, the front fabric and batting would be cut twelve inches square, exactly, without a seam allowance.  The back fabric would be cut fourteen inches square.

Square within a square quilting

The fabrics are placed wrong sides together with the batting sandwiched between them, centered.  Pins or basting spray (always applied to the fabric rather than to the batting) can be used to hold the sandwich together.  The quilting can then be done, either by hand or by machine. 

Once the square’s quilting is finished, one raw edge of the back fabric is folded up to butt with the raw edge of the smaller front fabric; the back fabric edge is then folded over the front and sewn in place. A simple running stitch can be used, or fancy embroidery stitches in a different color might embellish the square.  Each side is completed in this way; corners may be either mitered or simply overlapped.

Another typical block pattern

The completed squares, if small in size (perhaps four or six inches square) can be joined into a larger block (eight or twelve inches square) for a section of the quilt. This is done by carefully aligning evenly the finished edge of each square to the next square, joining the squares with whip-stitching or embroidery by hand, or top-stitching with a wide or decorative machine stitch. Again, the choice of stitches and threads will add a level of detail to the quilt.

Here is another link that tells a bit about Clara Barton, "Angel of the Battlefield" during the Civil War :  http://quiltalliance.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/3255/

Quilts

Of

Valor

UPDATE 9/10/2014

Our quilts have returned to us. The long-arm quilter volunteer has finished backing and quilting them, and we can now add the binding and the label, finish up our diary, and call to see to whom we can pass these along. Here are a few pictures of the quilts not quite done:

Here is our first quilt, with variegated quilting on a blue flannel backing added by the Long-Arm volunteer.

And here is our second quilt with a red flannel backing and variegated quilting:

UPDATE 3/20/2014
While waiting for our first Quilt of Valor to come back from the quilter for its binding and label, we worked together on a second QOV top.  This one came from a kit of pre-cut squares and strips.  We put them together in a more random pattern, and Renee joined our six strips of five blocks together. We decided this one didn't need a border around it, as the varied sashings around each block gave it just the randomness we were looking for:

UPDATE 3/14/2014
With the final borders attached, our quilt is sent off to the long-arm quilter for backing and quilting.  It will come back to us then for the binding, the label, the journal and the delivery!

Ready for quilting and a binding of red with stars.

UPDATE 3/4/2014
Our first quilt top is nearly finished and will be on its way to the longarmer later this week.  Here it is, needing only three more sides of blue border:

UPDATE 2/3/14

What a lovely lunch we had ... delicious soup, bread, grapes (and of course brownies) with coffee and tea. But before lunch, we worked on equalizing the blocks we had individually made. Some of the whites had residual pink, but Renee was prepared and brought a special bar of soap and freed them from the excess dye that had run from the reds and blues. Beverly and Betty were busy trimming edges, while Judy began building the quilt on the quilt wall. Terry was rinsing the pinks and laying them out to dry, then began ironing them. Lunch was a welcome respite.  Most of the group went back to the quilting wall and continued ironing, trimming and arranging the blocks according to the pattern that Pam had designed in our first meeting. Here is what was done before lunch... more to follow!

UPDATE: 1/27/2014

Our second meeting will be at Betty's house on Nelson Avenue. See your email from Betty for the date, time, and address.  She has a Quilt Wall which will be a lot of fun for us to use as we begin to join our mutual blocks together. We'll also come up with a plan for the Presentation Case at that meeting.  See you there!

One of our four nine-block patterns

******************************

On January 20, 2014, a holiday for most, set aside to celebrate the life of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,Quilters' Quarters held the first meeting of a group of local quilters who are forming the new Georgetown Quilts of Valor. This special holiday is one on which many Americans do community service to better the lives of their neighbors and friends living in their community. With frozen clumps of snow falling noisily from the nearby white pines onto the greenhouse roof adjacent to the room where the six quilters met, the new friends talked about the national initiative that provides comfort quilts to honor veterans who have given military service to our country.

The Massachusetts coordinator of the Q.O.V. Foundation  had come to Quilters' Quarters after delivering a Quilt of Valor to my neighbor next door. He was a U.S. Navy veteran who served off the coast of Korea during that conflict. While serving, he demonstrated the humanitarian compassion of seeking and receiving permission to bring more than a hundred South Korean children aboard the ship for a Thanksgiving Dinner. I was invited over to join the celebratory presentation, and in turn, Theresa Perreault stopped in to our quilt shop before leaving town for another presentation half-way across our Commonwealth.

She left me with a packet of information about forming a group, and samples of beginner blocks to be models for our Quilt of Valor. I spent a little time selecting and cutting more sample kits for our first meeting later that month.

At the table by the wood-stove, in full view of the beautiful snow-scape beyond the sheltered, blooming geranium plants in the greenhouse, the group of quilters talked about a possible arrangement of the planned nine-block squares.  The small number of squares were then counted out to fit the chosen pattern and divided among the six women.

While Judy was busy pressing the yards of blue and red and white fabrics to ready them for the cutting, copies of the nine-patch and the coping-strip directions were being made. Later, more copies were made of the design being carefully planned and drawn by Pam with Renee's help to be sent home with the three and a half inch squares of red, white and blue fabrics that Beverly and Betty were busily cutting; then as much more red and blue fabric in two and a half inch 'coping' strips were cut.

Pam began assembling plastic baggies filled with the appropriate number of squares and strips for each quilter's assignment while Terry typed and copied for each the descriptions of how the blocks would be assembled.

A second meeting will be held in a few weeks, and the completed blocks will come back to the table with the members of the group.  The 'coping' strips will earn their title by helping the quilters bring these squares together in size and design. Then the completed rows of blocks will be joined together and the semi-finished top will be sent to Mrs. Perreault, who will then send it to a volunteer long-arm quilter for backing and quilting. The quilt will then find its way back to Georgetown to have the binding added to finish the quilt itself, and the group will then design and complete a 'presentation case' to match.

I'll post photos of our next meeting here in early February.  'Til then, enjoy the photos of our paperwork and fabric squares.

 Be well, be warm, and be safe
       . ~Terry