I have blogged before about my church raffle quilt, but I thought I'ld share the history of the group.
Last night at church we meet for another group called Woman cooking for Woman.
"On the first Friday of each month (except July and December), women gather to cook, converse, cajole and donate to a cause or project that supports women. We rotate between global and local causes in order to educate ourselves to the plight and concerns of women everywhere."
They asked me to do a presentation about the raffle quilt since the money we raise now goes to charity. It was a great opportunity for me to review the history of our group and I decided to put together a slide show with most of the quilts that we have made in the last 15 years.
The UUQuilters were originally started to add funds to our own building committee. Our church was moving into a new building that we were creating out of an old 19th century 8 bay barn on the property were we meet. The idea was to make the quilt, raffle the tickets and contribute the money to our church's needs. We did this for ten years. After that time we wanted to start donating the money to causes we felt strongly about, and began giving to two kinds of charities, one locally in our own community and one internationally. The last five years we have donated to the following groups.

•Building fund for our own Prairie Cathedral
Funds to help with a new stain glass window in our entryway

Elgin Community Crisis Center
Elgin Larkin Center
Bethesda Community Development Center
The Fistula Foundation
The Hunger Project
The UUCE World Bank
All People's Inter Faith Pantry

The slide show shows most of the quilts that we have made over the years and some of the people who have worked on them. It has been a great experience and we have grown close as a group. Originally we started out making a log cabin block set in the barn raising pattern. How appropriate for our group. The very first quilt we made as a group hangs in the entryway of our church and was made in red and gray the colors of a barn. After that we did all kinds of color combinations.
Eventually we had to simplify the pattern to accommodate the very different abilities of people who worked on the quilt.
We started making stripy units that where then cut into triangles and sewn together with other stripy units cut in triangles. This way it compensated for variances in seam allowances and allowed anyone who wanted to participate to be able to do so. It has been a great success.

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