My first friendship quilt

When I belonged to the two quild guilds in Michigan, they met once a month.  Then there were smaller groups that met weekly, taking turns on meeting at each other's homes.  The WAGs (Wednesday Afternoon Group ladies) would draw for places on a list, and as our name came up, it would be our turn to request blocks from the other ladies.  This request could take whatever form the recipient specified.  The year I first participated, most of the ladies were asking for blue-and-white blocks.  They were lovely, but I got really tired of them, so when it was getting close to my turn, I began making sets of templates from a book I had gotten at the quilt show in Paducah.  It had patterns for 14" blocks.  I used template plastic to make the sets and put them into ziplock bags, along with a picture of the block.  I made a lot of them to allow for choice--some were fairly simple, some were migraine-inducers for us overachievers.  Then I set out a plastic milk crate and started pulling fabrics from my stash.  I had a large floral on a black background, a paisley in rust with black, a striped fabric, several pumpkin colored prints, several silvery gray prints, some black prints, and some rust prints.  The rules I set were that they needed to use either the large floral or the paisley, some of the striped fabric, some of the pumpkin, and as much of the other fabrics as they wished.

The week my turn came around, I brought out that milk crate of fabric, and handed around the template sets so that the ladies could pick which one they wanted to make.  I wish I had a picture of them when they saw that crate of fabrics--they were cutting their eyes at each other, and I could hear them thinking--"this is going to be one butt-ugly quilt"--but they were all far too kind to say it out loud.  Then as the next few weeks went by, the blocks came to me, and the maker usually said, "This really turned out pretty!" in an astonished tone.  The quilt went on to win some ribbons and get juried in to some shows.  I think it's gorgeous.