IMOB (Read on to learn what it stands for!)

Hello everyone - it's so fun to be a guest blogger on this fabulous blog!!  Thank you, Sarah, for the invitation - I want to brag on the generosity of a whole group of fabulous quilters!

I want to tell you a fabulous story about a woman named Bev...  Bev Bennett, from Alaska.  Normally I don't share people's last names on the web for protection of their privacy, but in this case, it will be ok - don't worry....  Mixed into the story will  be photos - photos of quilts, of course!!  Like this one: 

Bev Bennett was a member of the Sunshine Yahoo Quilt Guild, an online quilt guild founded by another great woman, Terry of the Northeast.  The Guild donates quilts to Rotary International - the quilts go with doctors on medical missions to very poor countries, where they donate surgeries to children who have facial disfigurements, like cleft palette.  When each child awakens from surgery, they are wrapped in a beautiful quilt... like this little child in India.............. and they get to go home all snuggled in the quilt.

Bev loved quilting for this project, and during the long, dark Alaska winters, she would take tops mailed from other members and quilt them on her domestic sewing machine at an amazing rate - she was a fabulously prolific quilter...turning out fabulous quilts ready to go into the donation box to some distant land.

You've noticed by now that I am using past tense... about a year ago, Bev, who usually posted regularly to the list, suddenly fell silent - and after a few anxious days where we worried about her, we learned that she had passed on.  (to counteract that sad note, let's look at another quilt)

Well - enter a friend of Bev's from the Sunshine Guild...after talking to her family, this great friend, Linda, went to Bev's house, and packed her stash into boxes which she mailed across the country to 'friends of Bev' who took those scraps and made many, many charity quilts. 

Another friend of Bev declared the nine-patch the 'official Bev block', and invited people to send in 9patches to her - she received 1,200 blocks!!!!!  Good work, Gail!

More than a year later, we are still assembling 9 patch quilts, and packing them for shipping... here's a photo I entitled "A Basket o' Bev"...

and here's a small group of quilts all out for some fresh air on my back porch! 

This post is a testament - to Bev, first of all - thank you, Quilting Angel.  But it is also a testament to all the 'helpers' - her friends Linda and Gail, and everyone who is still sewing with her stash and scraps!! 

I bet Bev never imagined that 'her' quilts would still be coming to life a year after her passing...

How many quilts were made in IMOB (in memory of Bev)?  Many, many, many.  We don't know - we just didn't count - and , anyway, they aren't over yet - there's still more 9-patches in that enormous stack of blocks. 

I hope she knows.................good work, Bev, and friends of Bev!

Submitted with a warm heart,

Kate

(aka the Quilting Professor, http://quiltingprofessor.blogspot.com