Friend Time - Both of us sewed for hours

I have a friend here in Poland who told me that after she finished up with her language studies, she would have time to help me with my charity quilting/piecing. She’s another American missionary who loves to sew - and relatively new to the area.

Well, she wrote me and told me last week that Friday was her last day of intensive language studies for a bit and she had some time to help me out.

So, we agreed that on Tuesday and Thursday she would come over and we’d spend time sewing on charity tops I had prepared already.

And so we did.

I brought my Janome 9450 for me to use from my sewing room upstairs and brought the 8900 from downstairs for her to use.

I set up an ironing board nearby and fixed everything up for her including a nice chair - one designed for professional sewists.

I had a few tubs of things ready to sew and a couple of bags. :) I was ambitious. I knew there was no way we could do that much, but you know, I was hopeful.

The first day we didn’t get that much done because we stopped for lunch. Also, she and her husband didn’t arrive til about 11:30. (She came by train and my husband went and got them.)

The second day she came alone and I went to the train station to pick her up at the same time as the first day. The difference was, we didn’t stop for lunch. We worked all the way through til 4 pm without really stopping.

Overall, we were able to get 20 single tops finished and 1 larger one. We just added borders to tops I already had—we did not make them from scratch!!

I had already cut a whole lot of things and had them stored in these bins - shown below. I had put off making them up because I was having fun doing other things. :)

Plus, my relatively new friend, Natasha, at church, is doing 2 a week for me, and eventually, well, that’s a lot…in a steady way. Plus…did you see how many charity tops I’ve already done this year?

Let me see where I am so far…250!

With these 21 tops, that will be over 270. I will probably aim for 300, as that’s a nice round number. :) This does not count those 2 that Natasha is getting done week by week. I am putting those directly into the cabinet at church - no pictures.

Here’s what we did! Actually, I had 2 of hers and 2 of mine to finish up after I took her to the train station at about 4:15 pm. By that I mean, I had to add a single border or two to a couple of hers and a couple of mine to finish the ones we were working on. I didn’t want to have any partially done tops. I did that and finished that up before about 5:30 when my husband and I had to leave to go to a meeting.

Almost all of these tops except that top one shown below, are from Fran in Arizona, or some of you all - as they were a bit different in style than the ones Fran does.

I’m not showing all of them individually here though I will show you eventually. I just wanted to show you that I did this.

Now preparing for this took a bit more energy than I thought it woud. I loved having her over and getting all that work done. That made me feel fantastic. I wish we could have gotten more done - but love what we did get done.

I don’t usually do social sewing. I know some of you do this weekly. Maybe if I did, I would get used to it - but this was new for me. I think that chatting slows me down, however. :) But that’s okay - it was a chance for us to talk a bit. It was definitely different for me!

So, new experience for me - just wanted to share!

Do you ever get together with a friend or friends to sew - either charity or otherwise?

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky PetersenComment