Charity Quilts 2017 Goal Reached!!

As the busy times will soon start with Christmas only a few weeks away, I finally found the time to finish my Charity Quilt Goal for this year.

In January I resolved to make 12 quilts for charity and I have accomplished this goal.  So glad to contribute to Victoria's Quilts and local organizations in my area.


Here's a Coin quilt.  I had never heard of this quilt style before.  It was suggested to me by one of the quilt guild ladies. I really enjoyed it and once again it consumed those bits of fabric that might otherwise not have been used.  There were 2 methods of putting these pieces together.  One was by sewing 2 1/2" x WOF strips together - about 5 strips seems a good number.  Then cut into 6 1/12" segments.  When there weren't any long enough strips of fabric, I sewed shorts pieces together and that worked as well.  Just remember to straight the work as you go.  Things can go wonky otherwise :)

I'm calling this quilt Rectangles within Rectangles.
This quilt's blocks are 6 1/2" x 10 " unfinished.  No chain sewing here!!  The fabric was from my stash - mostly pinks and blues, but it seemed to work.

 Now to ponder my projects for next year.......

Quilting for the Family

Being retired, I now have lots of time to quilt and both my close and extended family have benefited.  Over the last few years, my children, grandchildren and grand nephews and others have received quilts made especially for them.  My latest baby quilt is on its way to a grand-niece in Nova Scotia.

The pattern is called Falling Into Place by Sweet Jane's Quilting.   I chose non-traditional colors including a variety of fabrics mostly from Deborah Edwards line of Bundle of Love.  They are whimsical and bright - perfect for a baby quilt.


The quilting design is made up of teddy bears, stars and moons - one of my favorites for this type of quilt.

Each quilt includes a custom label to mark the occasion.
I know that these quilts will be special keepsakes for years to come.

How to Use a Snow Carpet to Quilt Your Quilts

If you like to free motion quilt, here's an idea I saw online from Sew Very Easy.



   

Random Rectangles - Charity Quilt #10

Still on track with my goal of 1 charity quilt a month for this year. This month's pattern is called Random Rectangles.  It can be found in Ellen Luckett Baker's book "1, 2, 3 Quilt". 

The pink and blue fabrics with the odd dash of green, blend nicely in this design.  Helps to use up lots of fabric stash too.

Free motion quilting in meander design.

Quilties

Our quilters' guild supplies the local hospital with Quilties for the newborns.  I enjoy making them as it uses up my stash of fabric and allows me to practice my free motion quilting.  Most of all it gives the newborns a little something special to take home with them.

The quilties I made this month gave me a chance to try a few new pattern blocks.  

I have made a Disappearing 9 Patch quilt before, but this one was made with no particular background fabric, just assorted blocks.  Also, when there wasn't enough material for a full block I pieced from smaller cuts of fabric.  Certainly a different look.  The free motion quilting was hearts and curves with circles. 

Took the opportunity to try a Quilt As You Go quiltie.  This is a fun method which works well with long strips that are at least 1 1/2" to approximately 3" in width.  Once all the fabric was sewn, I made lines diagonally to the ones that were formed when I sewed the long strips on.

The guild sometimes provides kits of fabric that we can work with.  I picked up one that had some interesting colors -  dark blues, reds, yellows and black and white fabric - not the usual baby pastels.  It also had a print of snowmobiles with some of those colors.   Fortunately, there was enough fabric for 2 quilties.  I made On the Fence pattern with one and stitched in the ditch for quilting.

The second was Rectangle Pinwheels.  The quilting was hearts, curves and circles.

And finally, Pastel Rectangles and Squares quiltie. Lots of soft baby colors and the quilting was free motion echo shells.

Disappearing 9 Patch - Charity Quilt #9

This pattern is quick to sew up and creates a nice look.

This pattern  is designed by arranging and sewing together 9 squares to create a traditional 9 patch block.  Keep the center block of the 9 patch the same fabric,  4 blocks the background fabric and 4 corner blocks different fabric.  

Then  cut down the middle vertically and horizontally to give you 4 pieces.  

 

Then sew them together in this design and be sure to square them up.  There are lots of tutorials on line to demonstrate the Disappear 9 Patch.

I quilted diagonal lines fairly wide apart and then quilted again at a 90 degree angle to the first lines of quilting.  Hand sewed the binding and it's ready for Victoria's Quilts.

Charity Quilt #8 - Seeing Wonky Stars

Seems I've developed a liking for creating scrappy quilts lately.   So my latest quilt for charity was destined to be scrappy too.  I added some wonky stars to the quilt. This was my first attempt at the stars and I think it works.

 

The randomness of scrappy quilts really appeals to me and it was sometimes hard to resist the temptation to coordinate colors.

 This was also my first attempt at using my Bernina BSR for quilting this larger size of quilt.  I managed to do a tear drop with echo effect design- something I learned from Leah Day's free motion quilting course.  The quilt was a bit unmanageable at times, but a bit of scrunching and maneuvering and it worked.
 
  Best part -  scrappy quilts use up a lot of the fabric stash which means I get to shop for more fabric  :) 

Carefree Columns - Victoria Quilt #7

This pattern by Nancy Zieman is called Carefree Columns. Very enjoyable to use long strips of fabric for some of this quilt.  Makes it go together so much faster.

Seems that I've been doing a lot of blue quilts this year.   I found the blues and golds worked well.  

 Quilted an easy design with my Bernina walking foot.  Sometimes the KISS principle is best.  

This makes the 7th quilt for Victoria's Quilts this year. 

This Way, That Way Quilt - Victoria's Quilt #6

My latest Victoria's Quilt  is called This Way, That Way.  Not sure if this is an old quilt design with which I'm not familiar, so forgive me if it goes by another name.

It went together quickly and this is how I constructed it.

The quilt consists of 35 blocks and 2 ¾” border.  All seams are a 1/4".

Block construction:

Cut various prints 4 ¼ x 4 ¼ (A)

Cut various prints 4 ¼ x 5 ¾ (B)

Cut white 2” strip x WOF  (C)

Sew one square print piece (A) to one rectangle (B).  (C)

Sew a  unit C to each side of a 9 ½” strip of white being sure to put one side in the opposite direction of the other.

Row construction:

Sew a block with the white center strip horizontal to a block with the white center strip going in a vertical direction; and so on.   (As you can tell, I am not a pattern writer  and this may not be clear enough directions, so if you have any questions,  contact me.)  Most of you I'm sure will be able to figure this out by looking at the picture of the quilt.

The rows were then sewn together and I added a border. 

For Border:  Cut white 3 ¼” width

Sandwiched the top, batting and flannel backing.  I always use the Leah Day method for getting a nice flat quilt sandwich to work on.  Then with my Bernina walking foot I stitched in the ditch for the quilting.

Binding was hand sewn.

Colors of teal, green and gold worked very nicely together.

Scrappy Quilt

Oh yes, it started out so simply. I wanted to clean up and organize (once again) my quilt area. Sure, I had a stash of material ready for projects but I also had a stash of remnants - all of those smaller, left over pieces - some dating back 25 years with lots of memories. I had a lap-sized quilt in mind and started cutting (and piecing) 2 1/2 inch squares and tossing them in a container to ensure randomness when piecing.  Also did some piecing to create some unique 2 1/2" squares.

In what can be described as a positive example of ‘mission-creep’, over the next three weeks and 100 plus hours, the project had grown into a queen-sized with colours randomly chosen to create my beautiful scrappy quilt.  Made from 1,400 pieces sewn to form fifty-six 10-inch blocks, I added a one-inch sashing around blocks and two-inch border to finish the quilt top.

After piecing, I went to Jen’s at Happy Wife Quilting to try my hand at machine-quilting. What a treat to use the long-arm quilter - I want one!  

With Jen's setup and guidance, I easily finished the quilting in less than a day.    I discovered, straight lines in patterns require plenty of practice, so I chose a pantograph pattern called "Vertigo" with lots of curves.  The batting was my favorite, Warm & Natural.    I hand-stitched the green binding to finish the quilt.

 
The backing was originally purchased for a smaller size so I applied some creativity to make it wide enough.  

I’m really quite happy with the results.  ALL of my remnants and some of my good stash are gone.  And after making so many quilts for relatives and charities, this time, I have a quilt made just for me! 😊

Craftsman Quilt

I really like the Craftsman quilt designed by Amy Smart from Diary of a Quilter blog.  

Amy has some wonderful patterns.  Check out her site when you get a chance.

As I made this one for the Victoria's Quilts, I needed to have a specific size which was slightly different from the pattern.  I made a few changes to size of blocks and ended up with a great looking quilt .  Brown and orange fabrics pop against the white background fabric.  The variety of fabrics makes it such an interesting quilt.

Bound in an rusty orange and quilted with straight lines in varying widths.  

Quilt #6 for charity this year.