Red White and Stars All Over - {July/August CiL Block Drive}

 Happy 4th of July, everyone! It's time for the 2019 "Oh My Stars!" Covered in Love block drive!  For the past 3 years, every summer quilters make red, white, and blue star blocks for Covered in Love to be finished into quilts for grieving families.

These patriotic quilts are loved by everyone, but especially treasured by the families of veterans.  In the past 3 years we have made 27 warm, cozy star quilts for East Texas families who lost someone. 

If you want to help out with this year's drive here's what you need to know.  Blocks should be:

•  Red, white, and or blue
• Any pattern that you would would consider a star (or stars)
• 12.5" (unfinished)
• In the mail by August 31st

That's it! Anyone can participate and you can make as few or as many blocks as you like. Please email CoveredinLoveTx@gmail.com or comment with your email address for the the address to mail blocks. 

Here are some places you might find patterns to get you started:

Delaware Quilts has LOTS of star patterns
Briawna collected some block links when my Bee did stars
Quilters' Cache also has LOTS of stars in this list
35 Star Quilt patterns
Wonky "Confetti Star" free on Craftsy
Paper pieced "Star Seams" free on Craftsy

You can also look at the finishes from previous years for inspiration here, here, and here.

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) non profit charity that provides quilts to families who lose a loved one in an East Texas hospital. Since 2015 we have distributed nearly 50 quilts with help from quilters all over the world.  If you have any questions you can learn more on the main page.

String Drive 2019: Round 1

Happy weekend, quilters! The first round of string quilts from the Jan/Feb drive are ready for show and tell. All these quilts were assembled and quilted by volunteers other than me.  (Thanks ladies!)

This year's string drive was extremely successful, with over 700 blocks sent in.  I'm expecting we'll eventually have something like 25 finished quilts.

A few folks have volunteered to help finish quilts from this blocks drive again.  Tammy S. made these two quilts from donated blocks and backing that I shipped to her. 

These last two quilts were assembled by Nancy and quilted by her friend Jenn. 

Nancy always does creative things with the blocks I send to her and Jenn has a long arm for quilting.

Beautiful backing fabrics donated by volunteers!

These blue blocks were sent in by Jeanine, assembled by Nancy, and quilted by Jenn. I'm counting them as part of the block drive, since they were sent around the same time.

Thank you Nancy, Jenn, Jeanine, Tammy, and everyone who has sent in backings and blocks to the drive! Looking forward to many more quilts from another successful string drive!

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

Flying Geese Quilts Have Landed

Happy weekend and welcome to another block drive wrap up for Covered in Love! These 5 quilts were made from blocks sent in during the  Nov/Dec block drive.

Two were assembled and quilted by me and three by Kathy.  It's been a long time since we did a feminine block drive since we usually need masculine quilts more, but I'm glad we did this one!

I love how the soft and saturated colors work together! I also had a great stash of feminine and purple backing fabrics built up to go with these.

Absolutely perfect backing fabrics to compliment these cozy, sweet tops.  Many of them came from Sandra, who loves bird fabrics, so special thanks to her.

Covered in Love is now at 482 quilts distributed to grieving families. With the next delivery we will surpass 500!

Thanks to a small army of supporters CiL is halfway to blessing 1000 Texans with quilts of comfort. 

Speaking of supporters, go check out this quilt Louise made from a mixed box of orphan blocks, UFOs and fabric donated to me by various quilters.  Whenever I start to feel I'm falling too far behind on converting donations to finished quilts I can count on Louise to take some of the load off!

Below you can see the map of all the quilters who contributed to this block drive. (And I added the map to last week's Eye Spy quilts post, since I had forgotten it.)

Thank you, all!

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

Eye Spy More Finished Quilts

Hello quilters :) At long last the final two quilts for Covered in Love from last Fall's eye spy block drive are done!

You can see the first six quilts that were finished from this drive here.  We ended up with 8 quilts from that drive. I finished 3 and my local quilter-hero Kathy did the other 5 (including both of the ones on this post).

This is one of my favorite block drives because of the many fun fabrics that will give families something to look at and connect to.

As you can see, we added sashing to extend the last of the blocks to make a large enough quilt.  No blocks leftover from this drive, they were all used!

Thank you to everyone who contributed blocks, backings, bindings, and of course Kathy for assembling and quilting. 

Some of you may remember that back in January I bought a little house. Well, I've been trying to have it moved to my parent's property since then but it has RAINED and rained and rained.  Seriously, every time I thought it was stopping it rained more. We got 7" in one night a couple weeks ago.  The pasture was far too soggy for a big truck to drive across until now. We finally got a dry enough window of time to move the house and it's here! Hallelujah!  Still probably a month or more until I can move in, some renovations and of course utilities have to be hooked up, but the biggest obstacle has been over come.

PS - Covered in Love's address won't be changed by my move since I'm just moving a few hundred feet!

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

(More) Love from Canada

Jannette is a regular contributor to Covered in Love. I've lots track of how many boxes of beautiful tops she has sent me from Canada! You can see all her previous quilts by following this link and scrolling down.

Sandra and others have kept me in stock with interesting backings to compliment them.

Isn't this brown and teal quilt a beauty? It's actual-twin size. Something like 55"x85".

Sandra must be really a bird lover, judging by the numerous beautiful bird fabrics she has sent for backings.

Last up, this simple two color quilt with stars.  Jannette sent all of these as top and I backed and quilted them. I still have a couple left to go!

Bindings and backing fabrics also came from Holly and Nicki, among others.  Thank you to all of you who support CiL!


Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday