One week ago today I was in the small town of Dayton, Oregon (population 2,668) giving a presentation to a brand new quilt guild, the Willamette Valley Quilters. My talk was about the making of this quilt, Give Me the Simple Life:

It’s my version of Hazel’s Diary Quilt, designed by Shelly Pagliai and featured in her book A Simple Life: Quilts Inspired by the ’50s. The making of this quilt, including my struggle/journey to become proficient at needleturn appliqué, was well documented in my blog during most of 2018 and 2019 so no need to revisit it here. I got to revisit it, though, while preparing for my presentation. It was great fun to go back in time, so to speak, to tell the guild members the story behind the quilt.

The Willamette Valley Quilters held its first member meeting last month, that’s how new the guild is. Here’s a photo of the founding members from the guild’s website:

And here’s a photo of most of them at last week’s meeting:

There’s something special about this photo. Do you see it? In addition to wearing tee-shirts with the Willamette Valley Quilters logo on it, everyone in the picture is wearing pearls! Peggy Gelbrich, the guild’s first president (she’s third from the left), told me the board hopes to make it a tradition. Isn’t that a lovely idea?

The leaders of the guild could not have been kinder or more welcoming when I arrived to set up for the meeting, and it was a delight to interact with them and their members. So thank you, Willamette Valley Quilters!