US quilting bees, where women communally created quilts, aided women's rights

[cachukis]

1. My wife bees at a church on Monday mornings.

They quilt for hospice. They each work on pieces for a quilt sewn for a person's last days.
Additionally, each quilter gets half a yard of scraps to design their own quilt to be entered into a best of.
Today is their luncheon when the managers award prizes.
My wife is an artist working with encaustic wax.
Her best friend is an accomplished quilter and my wife has taken to quilting on our visits.
Her sewing machine went to the oldest daughter who sold it, so we tried a used replacement, but it was unacceptable.
I hear the steady pulse of the needle and an occassional curse as she takes on a new world.
Staying young.