What are our goals?
Instructors in CCQ’s four classes meet regularly to share ideas about teaching in our prison quilting program. We also use email to communicate with each other. A recent email exchange focused on our goals for teaching.
One instructor zeroed in on the technical aspects of quilting:
- How to find the grain of the fabric
- The importance of pressing fabric
- How to accurately cut fabric
- How to sew a 1/4” seam
- How to press seams
- How to connect seams accurately
- How to measure and sew borders
- How to sandwich a quilt and baste it
- How to do simple machine quilting
- How to apply binding, matching the ends for a smooth finish
- How to do blind hand stitching on the back side of bindings
- And how to read and follow a pattern
- The importance of finishing: sometimes it is just a block, then a row, and then an entire quilt
- The importance of learning from mistakes and persevering
- The importance of respecting each other and the instructors
- The importance of taking the time needed to do a good job
- The opportunity for creative expression
Meet our members: Liz Weeks
CCQ member Liz Weeks made the news recently when she was named Featured Quilter at the 2018 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.
Liz made her first quilt in the 1970s, then quit to raise her daughter and teach elementary school. She got bitten by the quilting bug again in 1999 and hasn’t stopped since. Liz likes to make traditional quilts best. She particularly enjoys seeing the patterns and colors come together. “I like my quilts to be useful and for people to find warmth in them,” she says.
CCQ was founded in 2002. Liz lived in Tigard at the time and became one of our first instructors after reading an article about it in The Oregonian. Teaching women incarcerated at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility was deeply satisfying to Liz. One of her students told her, “The only time I don’t think about where I am is when I’m here.”
When she moved to Bend in 2005, Liz became the Central Oregon Representative for Coffee Creek Quilters; she helps coordinate donations and publicity locally for us. Her other volunteer activities include the Quilts for Kids project, Kiwanis Food Project, and the Sisters Quilt Show.
You can learn more about Liz in the NuggetNews.com article “Featured artist finds comfort in quilts“.
Thank you Liz for your past, present and future support of CCQ. Meet our volunteers: Rachel Wallis
Radio station KBOO’s Prison Pipeline program recently interviewed CCQ’s Rachel Wallis to share with their listeners about our prison quilting program. Rachel teaches in our Thursday afternoon class.
Rachel was involved in community quilting in Chicago before moving to Portland. She’s an activist who uses art in her organizing work, and an artist who engages in issues of racial and social justice. Rachel believes that traditional textile techniques, and particularly quilting, can provide a platform for creating dialog and understanding around complex ideas and issues.
We invite you to listen to the half hour KBOO interview to learn more about Rachel and our program. Quilts for donation
Happy new year to all of our wonderful donors and supporters!
We’re thrilled to report that women in the Coffee Creek Quilters prison quilting program made 125 quilts for donation in 2017. The quilts went to Emanuel, Good Samaritan, and Legacy Meridian Park Hospitals, Community Warehouse, and a variety of other programs that support people in need of comfort.
Each student in our program makes three quilts. The first two are for donation while students keep their third quilts. As we work on the first and second quilts, we sometimes speculate about who might receive them. A quilt with super-hero fabric might go to a kid in foster care while one with pink floral fabrics might go to an elderly woman in hospice.
We know that our quilts are much appreciated and look forward to continuing to provide quilts for donation. CCQ donates quilts to Portland area hospitals
CCQ instructor Diane Leveton snapped this pic of staff members at Emanuel Hospital when she delivered a stack of quilts made by students in our prison quilting program. The hospital gives comfort quilts to critically ill patients who are in particular need of extra tender loving care.
CCQ also donates quilts to Good Samaritan and Meridian Park Hospitals and to a variety of programs that support people in need of comfort.
Each student in our program makes three quilts. The first two are for donation; students keep their third quilts. Stories from our instructors
Coffee Creek Quilters offers four two-hour quilting classes every week for women incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. For instructors, the classroom experience is so much more than teaching someone to quilt. We learn about our students’ lives and share our own life experiences. Our goal is to nurture students’ self-esteem, so that they will be more successful living in the community after release from prison.
We’ve started a new series of posts on our Facebook page where we share stories about our classroom experiences. We invite you to “like us” on our Facebook page for access to all of the stories in this ongoing series. Here’s the first one:
Stories from our instructors: #1
“I met with a former student today to give her a release kit. We enjoyed a good visit at the local coffee shop. During our conversation she told me about the refusal of some of her family members to reconcile and offer forgiveness even though she assured them that she wasn’t the same person she had been when she entered prison. To me she said “You’re the reason I’m a different person – you and a volunteer in religious services. I’m not changed because of the staff, the officers, or the State. I’m changed because of the volunteers who helped me see my better self.”
–Martha, instructor