Ginny Hildreth and her Daughter, Torrie

Thank you Michele for allowing me to be a guest blogger! I was thrilled when I found out what day I got to blog!

I thought of all of the things I could say about my love of quilting and what draws me to this wonderful hobby, I finally decided that I would share with you all a little bit about what inspires me.

This is kind of a long story, for those of you who read my blog you already know the whole story. For those who are not regular readers at Ginny’s Quilts today, you get the condensed version!

My inspiration is my daughter Torrie, you see she is not just my daughter but my quilting buddy, my shopping buddy and my greatest critic. I started quilting about 4 years ago, and in very little time she started quilting with me. Then a year ago she needed a project for her Girl Scout Silver Award. She decided to make rag quilts for charity; she called her project Blankets of Love. In the course of 2 months Torrie contacted business and individuals for donations of flannel, she then spent her entire summer sewing snipping and washing more than 50 rag quilts!

At the end of the summer she split the quilts between two local hospitals, our local pregnancy center, the migrant farm workers council daycare and Safe Babies, Safe Moms (an organization that works with drug addicted moms getting back on the right track). It was a wonderful sight to see this young woman give so much of herself to so many worthy organizations.

Then when things had settled down, school started again, we thought, well that is done now we can just quilt for us, less than two weeks later we watched the news as Hurricane Ike blew ashore on Galveston Island. I lived in Texas for many years and had spent time in Galveston, so we talked and decided that Blankets of Love should fire up again, this time Mom got to help sew as this was no longer a Girl Scout project, just helping people in need. We spent hours sewing together, and very soon had another 50 quilts done, not all made it to Texas as several were donated to domestic violence families here, but we did send more than forty to the folks in Galveston.

Now, with Christmas over, and time to spare, we are still quilting, making Blankets of Love, ready to send them out as the need arises.

So yes Torrie is my inspiration, and I hope she is an inspiration for you also. Quilters have always been known for their generous hearts, for giving to so many worthy causes, I encourage you to keep up the good work, keep giving, be it QOV, Project Linus, or just to your local hospital or domestic violence shelter. Let one young ladies project speak for us all and cover the world in Blankets of Love.

I encourage you to stop by my blog to read Torrie’s entire journey. There are several posts that document the Blankets of Love project, just look for the posts with the cute blond teenager!

Oh and by the way, the best thing about today is it is Torrie’s 15th birthday. Please join me in wishing her many more quilting years to come!

So happy birthday, my daughter, my friend, my inspiration.

Ginny