Not Sew Easy? Despite the Comforting Deliverables, The Quilting Winterim Can Be a Challenge.
by Jess Fatzinger ’20
It is day three of Winterim, and we finally set out to talk to “Quilting Is Sew Easy” after their field trip to a fabric store — Keepsake Quilting — in Center Harbor, New Hampshire, yesterday.
The Quilting Winterim is one of the longest-running programs Lawrence Academy offers, with the scraps of fabric lingering among the Schoolhouse’s science wing, year-round.
Ms. Mosely and Ms. O’Connor lead the program and turn the off-term, darkened science classrooms into a buzzing room of determined underclassmen.
One member of the Winterim, Giselle Balvuena ’20 described their trip to a fabric store they day before in which “there were so many different kinds of fabrics, with each section having a different color.
“It was kind of fun to see the different designs and the different colors to pick for our own quilt.”
Giselle plans on incorporating a sun and moon theme to her personal quilt, but she’s also assigned a second quilt.
Freshman Victoria Lucotoni ’22 explained that everyone in the Winterim is “making individual quotes, but we are also making quilts for patients at the local hospital. We’re doing that in groups of two or three and those depend on what the kids’ color preferences are.”
One quilt a week is quite a deadline, and it showed in Victoria’s face since she has limited sewing experience and had never done any crafts, nevermind quilting, previously.
However, despite the intensity of the program, the atmosphere of the sewing room could energize anyone who wandered into the space.
Furthermore, the sight of a room full of students focused on their sewing machines as if they had years of quilting experience shows the immersive experience of the Winterim program.
Students can go from complete amateurs to extremely skillful from just a few days of dedicated practice, and the quilting Winterim is no different.