I love our quilting community! It is awesome to see how much our open sew days have grown. We are bursting at the seams trying to fit everyone in. Because this is the case, I've brought back our Wednesday open sews. From October and forward, we will have two days a week where we can gather together to work on our projects.
I've been thinking about our open sew days and wondering what it is about them that has made them so popular. It suddenly occurred to me that they are no different from the earlier quilting bees. Women have always loved coming together to sit side-by-side and create.
The quilting bee is believed to have originated in the 19th century in the Great Plains area, as the great migration for the east to Wild West began. These social events became important sources of companionship for women who otherwise lived very solitary lives as they tended to their families and homesteads. Women traveled for miles to attend their quilting bee.
All of the women would work together to complete a quilt for one of the ladies, and although this has changed in modern times, we still get together and share and help each other with our own projects. It is great fun to see this comradery as we help each other make design and color choices, help each other with a stumbling point, brainstorm ideas, laugh and poke fun at each other, and so on.
We have an awesome community of ladies. Thank you for making the open sews so popular, fun, educational, and inspirational. Although the open sews are free, we need you to register for them. Space is limited, and we want to make sure everyone has a chance to come who wants to come. If you know you can't make the date, please do not register or cancel as soon as possible so we can fill your space.
It is great to see that the quilting bee lives on, just with a slightly different mission.