Community Quilt Fundraiser
Lizzie Hogg, a local homesteader, artist, mother, and community organizer, is spearheading a second annual Community Quilting Bee.
Her goal is to donate all funds raised to a rotating organization every year, with hopes of education around needs, wants, values, and struggles of different underserved communities. (Last year the organization to receive donations was the FUBU Fund.) She will sell raffle tickets, so that one lucky winner will receive a quilt made by quilters who donate a 12″ x 12″ unfinished quilt square.
Waterfall Arts is currently hosting a basket in our lobby area to receive in-person donations, otherwise you may send to Lizzie directly through the mail, and she will will patch together a full-sized quilt to be raffled off in January.
This year, the quilting is for Rise and Shine Youth Retreats, and Lizzie says:
Something that I find particularly striking in Rise and Shine’s mission is to make comfortable spaces for BIPOC out of doors, which Maine prides itself on and is the major tourism attractor. Yet these are largely white populated spaces, making invisible barriers to learning rock climbing, hiking, kayaking, sailing skills, etc. Rise and Shine works to provide these experiences; to help re-program that our culture has taught them they are not accepted in these spaces. Rise and Shine also brings in self-care rituals to their retreats that include plant medicine and meditation. Find the place in you where you can show up for this work with love and hope and kindness as the retreat leaders at Rise and Shine do! I have found sewing is this time for me, carved out from family, work, farm obligations.
If you choose to participate, Lizzie is calling you to:
1. Educate yourself about social justice, anti-racism, and white allyship.
2. Create a 12″ x 12″ unfinished quilt square. Please do not pre-bind or quilt your square or I will not be able to use it! You can use any design you want, but I encourage you to steep this square in significance as part of your meditation- use fabrics that hold memories or personal meaning, choose a pattern/method that represents something for you. Screenprint it. Embroider it. Cut up your favorite t-shirt! It can be as simple or as complicated as you want, but pour a bit of yourself into your square- the work of social justice requires love, and quilting is love work.
3. Embroider your initials somewhere (not too near the edge!) on your square. The finished quilt will contain a strip embroidered with the words: “With the stitches of this quilt we bind ourselves to the work of anti-racism”. Your initials will be a signature to this quilted contract and a signature for your work (because you should be proud of what you make with your hands!).
4. Mail your square to me! Please get your square in the mail by Nov 30th at the latest. We can also meet up locally, if you prefer! Waterfall Arts is also hosting an in-person drop-off basket during business hours (10A – 5P)
Lizzie Hogg
Sight Unseen Woods
15 Ledge RD
Swanville ME 04915
Once your squares have made it here I will assemble them by machine and hand quilt and bind the finished piece.
