By Karen B. Alexander

It’s Raffle Quilt time again! Raffle Quilts mean additional funds for the Senior Center, thanks to the members of Enchanted Quilters.

It was the desire to raise funds for the Senior Services that brought quilters together on Lopez in 1984. Later they would take on the name Enchanted Quilters. Those first members were Marge Gradl, Gladys Alexander (of Shaw Island), Frances Currier, Bertha Kurutz, Wini Alexander, Edith Schwendeman, Charlotte Lamoureaux, Bernadette Butler, Ernestine Moffitt, Millie Gillespie and Millie Cowan.

Twenty-eight years later the members of Enchanted Quilters of Lopez Island are still making raffle quilts and sharing the funds raised with Senior Services. Their two colorful quilts this year are Northwindst, a pattern predominantly in warm colors, and God’s Eye, a delightful scrap quilt in which blue predominates. Either quilt will fit any décor!

Also, enjoy our delightful cartoon, shown right, designed for the members of Enchanted Quilters by amateur cartoonist, Jodie Sarah Masiwchuk of Kirkland, Wash. Masiwchuk won one of the 2010 EQ raffle quilts and expressed her delight and thanks by creating a cartoon about EQ’s fund raising efforts for Senior Services.  “Suburban Sara” is the name of the comic strips she is known for.

EQ members will be selling tickets at the Farmers’ Market and at the Notion’s Nook above Vitas until the tickets are sold out. Yes, this year there is a limited number of tickets available – a total of 300 tickets per quilt to be exact. Buy one ticket for $5 and you have a 1 in 300 chance to win. This increases everyone’s chance of winning so join in the fun and support the Senior Services at the same time.

The winning ticket will be drawn at EQ’s first fall meeting, September 11.