On Friday I had the fun of seeing a project I started working on last fall come to completion. My friend, Jean, had just picked up a freshly printed stack of booklets about one of her mother’s priceless story quilts – The Purple Sandwich Quilt – and invited me over to see them and celebrate.  I’m honored that Jean hired me to help get the booklets from good idea to completed project and I’m proud to be a part of the project’s success!

The Purple Sandwich Quilt booklet is the second of a dozen booklets Jean plans to publish about her late mother’s priceless collection of ‘story quilts.’ Upon inheriting the quilts in 2011, Jean recognized the importance of not just preserving the quilts but also documenting the stories her mother told with each quilt. So Jean, with the help of Paul Krause of Dancing Sun Multimedia, Jean created The Story Quilt Project website and a booklet to go along with one of the quilts – Jewell Wolk’s Look at The Life and Times of Ruth.

Jean wanted to create a booklet to go with each of her mother’s quilts but Paul was not able to help with subsequent books – this is where I come in. I had written a story about Jean and her mother’s quilts called “The Storytellers” and, before then, another story about Jean’s fabulous condo (“Downsizing Without Losing the Sense of Home“). Jean was pleased with my writing so asked if I could help her take her create a booklet to go with each of her mother’s quilts.

I said yes and we got to work!  Jean had pages of content already written – stories her mother, Jewell, told, woven in with stories of her own. Together, we talked about what Jean wanted in the final booklet then I edited, coordinated the layout, edited again, and again, and, finally, gave the go ahead to print the booklets. The project has been fun as well as a great learning experience for me. For one thing, I learned that I don’t have the correct tools to do print ready page layout (I thought I could do the layout in Pages but realized I needed proper publishing software) so had to outsource that work to the capable crew at By All Means Graphics, Northfield’s local print shop. Rob and his crew at By All Means were a great pleasure to work with. They did the booklet layout and quickly took care of any edits I sent their way.  I couldn’t be more pleased. Thanks By All Means!

Jean is absolutely delighted with the finished product and is excited to take them on to a quilting event where she is the guest speaker next week. And, guess what? Come the beginning of April, Jean will give me the next booklet to start working on!

Here’s to the next Story Quilt Project booklet, Jean!