Fabric store run to Taipei

For my new volunteer position as the Relief Society meeting coordinator at our church, the president of the organization asked if I could plan something that will enable the women to do some kind of a sewing project for our December Christmas-themed meeting, after which we will donate the quilts. What immediately came to mind was the same activity that we had done in Austin for our stake women's conference that I helped to plan and carry out for the last two years--baby quilts! I made the suggestion and she loved the idea and said that's exactly what she had in mind.

I have never seen a fabric store since I moved to Taiwan, but found plenty today when I drove my car from Hsinchu to Taipei for the first time, taking along two wonderful, delightful women with me, Abish and Charlotte. Abish is the voice of an angel who normally translates the church meetings into English on Sundays for us and Charlotte is one of my sweet visiting teachers, and her daughter, Joy is in the play. We left this morning for the one-hour drive that Charlotte navigated for. Abish normally drives a scooter, so it worked fine for me to drive, so I could figure out how to go there again.
We went to a traditional Taiwanese market where there are many vendors who have their own individual shops, sandwiched close to each other without permanent walls or structures, each store just a few feet from the others, where customers can theoretically bargain for lower prices. That wasn't the case today, but we purchased fabric to make seven different baby quilts. I didn't send any of my sewing things with the shippers before we moved, so this afternoon, I bought some scissors, pins, needles, thread, and batting also. We ended up with a bright and cheery combination of prints then we will pool our efforts together to magically create the baby quilts with TLC and Christmas spirit for our humanitarian aid service project. Here's what we have:

1) red and ivory little piggy
2) yellow dinosaur with red polka dots
3) pink and brown gingerbread man
4) blue elephant with yellow polka dots
5) yellow stripe with blue whale gingham
6) bunny bear pals with turquoise polka dots
7) green transportation with red gingham
The work is cut out for me this weekend to wash and dry all the fabric, then iron all of it and prepare it to be distributed, plus sew and complete one quilt to show as a sample for next week's meeting. Hopefully the sewing machine that Charlotte loans me will be easy enough to figure out. I'll be sure to post pictures of the event and the finished quilts in the future.