The Canadian Quilters’ Association is holding a Canada-wide quilting bee to commemorate our 150th birthday. The women in my building got together yesterday and we made blocks/slabs to contribute to the more than 1000 quilts the association hopes to donate to Ronald McDonald Houses across the country.

Most of the women dug through scraps of fabric, assembling strips and pieces to sew into 12 1/2″ blocks (each block to contain a small piece of “Canada cloth” containing maple leaves) – I was one of the sewers. I must have stitched at least 15 blocks. In all, we assembled 50 blocks – enough for two 4×6 tops, or four 3×4 tops which is what the Association will be making at the “Big Quilt Bee” to be held in Toronto June 14-17. During the four days volunteers will be assembling thousands of individual quilt blocks into quilt tops and making them into quilts.

As we were leaving Avis handed me one more batch of pieces. I made the block this morning:

Lobster Block

My lobster block has the requisite maple leaves, along with some Nova Scotia tartan and colours representing the forests, sea, sun and sky of Nova Scotia. I completed the block with a multi-coloured scrap. I hope it tickles the fancy of some recovering child.

As of March 31: “STATUS UPDATE on the Big Quilt Bee
300 finished quilts, 143 tops and 1,000 blocks (which will make 83 quilts) for a total of 513 quilts to date!”