Thursday, June 1, 2023

Assorted Block Drive Quilts

Happy Friday quilters! This weekend I have quilts from Linda to show you. Linda has been such a busy worker bee for the past couple years helping to finish CiL quilts.

This geese quilt was Linda's contribution to the Sept/Oct 2022 drive, she made this one entirely herself. I really like this quilting design with the loops. 

This quilt is from the 2021 red, white, and blue stars drive. I recognize a lot of Mina's fabrics in there. 

Linda assembled and quilted the blocks. I know that quite a few of you helped Cynthia with her red white and blue churn dash drive. She's going to make that a yearly thing, so I hope it helps to scratch that patriotic quilting itch.

Next, 3 fall colored quilted from the 2021 Tall Nines block drive. There have been so many of these and I still love them!

Counting this post there are 29 done so far and posted on the blog. Six are done and not photographed yet. Two are out with a volunteer quilter. And 7 are still in block form. That's adds up to 44 quilts from this one drive once they're all done.

The Fall Tall 9s block drive was CiL's most popular block drive ever, by far!

I'm sure the runner up is one of the string drives, but I don't know which. 

I love the variety of patterns and color palettes these fall quilts have, the benefit of having so many different quilters participate! Hopefully soon I can have another block drive, but in the meanwhile watch Cynthia's blog, as the next block drive for Compassion Quilts should launch this weekend. 


 Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Pops of Sunshine

 I've got another personal quilts to show you! I have also been doing some covered in love sewing. I made about 25 backs for various tops the other day


I'm making this post with my phone, so I apologize in advance for any weird formatting. 60° triangles are maybe my favorite traditional-ish quilt pattern. I have made a lot of triangle quilts over the years and it's my go-to for showing off fabrics.


I really liked the colorful flower fabrics I found for this. I told my friend at the local quilt shop, I feel like the fabrics that are trendy right now are very much to my taste. Makes it hard to not spend too much money!


Throughout the top I added in some little flanges of gold satin ribbon folded in half and tucked in the seam. When I was taking pictures they really shined in the sun.


I quilted it with an all over stipple. Someday I'm going to get more adventurous with my quilting, but for now it's just so simple and so good.


The binding is a flowery ombre rainbow. This is a gift and it's in the mail! 


Fudge tucked himself in for a Saturday morning nap.

Give back box shipping

 We are having a hopefully temporary issue with give back box shipping. So if you were planning to ship anything with them please hold on to it until you get the all clear. If you shipped anything in about the last month please send me an email. In fact, if you have shipped anything with them and did not receive a confirmation email from me that it was received let me know.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Still Raining, Back to Work

Yes, it's still raining as I write this! Typical Texas, keeping us on our toes. All the quilts in this post arrived finished from Erin, who has sent in many quilts before. She rounds the corners of all her quilts and I love it, I don't know why I don't do that more.

I'm back to work this week after enjoying a very needed break. Our patient census is high so it looks like it will be a couple long weeks again.

What do you guys think of this unusual arrangement of plus blocks and 9 patches? I don't think I've ever seen it before. 

I love this scrappy string top. It reminds me of the tops I made from 1.5" strings years ago. There's so much joy and chaos in a scrappy quilt. Thanks to Erin for these beauties :)

With all this rain we should be drowning in cucumbers in a few weeks. We've been getting a handful of strawberries every day for a month or so. I hope those of you who garden are also enjoying the rewards!

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Thursday, May 11, 2023

May Showers

April showers bring May flowers, so they say. But it's May now and we're still having almost daily showers! I try not to complain because I know we'll probably have a dry summer soon enough, but boy does it get steamy when the sun comes out after a rain.

All the quilts in today's post are tops made by Priscilla and quilted by volunteer long-armer Wendy, thank you, ladies!

The top quilt with the value HSTs has quite a few blocks turned the "wrong" way. There's so many that it must be on purpose. It gives the quilt a little spice, but the overall pattern is still clearly visible. 

By contrast, this quilt with the flip corners seems so precise. I really like the mellow colors in all three of these. 

By the way, things worked out with getting CiL into a fourth hospital and I dropped off quilts this week! All of you give yourselves a pat on the back!

I also shipped two BIG boxes to Louise this week, so we can all look forward to more awesome quilts from her soon :)

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Still More Fun Than Housework

Happy Friday! Here are four more quilts assembled and quilted by Cynthia from our past year's block drives. Cynthia did such a good job on these while also getting her own quilting charity, Compassion Quilts, off the ground!

Cynthia talks about 3 of these in this post and the fourth one at the bottom of this post. She talks about how she chose to sort and arrange the blocks and there are also more pictures. 

This next one is my personal favorite of this set because of the more saturated colors and the pops of green. 

Cynthia's Compassion Quilts charity is currently making patriotic churn dash quilts from the March block drive. Her next block drive will begin in June. 

As for CiL, I'm working with folks at a new hospital to see about expanding our charity over there. That would make 4 hospitals in the East Texas area!

I had to get a close up of the pretty batiks in this last quilt. So lovely! Thank you quilters for all your support!

 Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Quilting IS More Fun Than Housework

Cynthia is a busy lady! I addition to her own compassion quilts she found time again this year to assemble and long arm some block drive quilts for CiL


First up, three Scrap Bin Geese quilts from last year's Sept/Oct drive.  You can see more photos of these on Cynthia's blog and read about how she put them together here. I'm a sucker for simple modern quilting, so I love these straight lines. 


Cynthia experimented with several different layouts for the blocks. Which do you like best, straight lines, pin wheels, or stair steps? 

I found this block because it was a block drive my do. Good Stitches circle did. You can see the quilt we made at the bottom of this post.  It was also partially inspired by this quilt block I asked the circle to make back in 2013.

There are another three or so quilts left to be made from these geese blocks, so I look forward to seeing how those come together!

Closing with a little bit of street art from Melbourne that I haven't posted yet. 


Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Finishing touches featuring Priscilla and Stephanie


Hello, friends! Louise here to share some lovely quilts that were donated as nearly finished tops and only required a little bit of extra sewing on my part. First up is this gorgeous sampler made by Stephanie.


The top was languishing in her UFO pile. So many fun blocks, several new to me! Check out this trapunto butterfly with metallic gold blanket stitching. You can see the pretty, shimmery pale blue background she used, too. I think it is Fairy Frost?


I love the colors in this quilt, and was thrilled to find this backing fabric donated by Christine. Doesn't it match perfectly? Christine sent it in with another project I'm still working on, and there was plenty of extra. Quilters are so generous!


Priscilla donated this bright log cabin block center made with dot-themed batiks. It was a little too small and needed a few borders to bring it up to size.


Several months after I received the center, Chris' polka dot squares showed up. I added the first border, but it was still not large enough. I set it aside, waiting for just the right fabric for another border. Imagine my delight when a bunch of presewn strips of the matching dotted batiks showed up over a year later! Good things come to those who wait.


Priscilla also stitched up these Easy Breezy blocks, a Bonnie Hunter leader/ender project. After I sewed them into a top, I decided they didn't need any borders. Thanks to the depth of Priscilla's fabric stash, the richness of the colors makes this piece shine in just this simple layout.


This quilt needed just a little more effort, but what a pleasure to work with Priscilla's friendship star blocks. They are made with partial seams to let the square centers float. I thought the bold floral for the borders was a nice counterpoint. 


Finally, this quilt started life as a pile of big, donated, precut triangles in two fabric patterns and solid orange. A little head-scratching and a handful of seams later, this giant exploding star was born. Gotta love a big block, it goes together fast!


I quilted it with casual Baptist fans using orange thread. It's bright and happy, for sure! Many thanks to everyone who has donated tops, blocks, projects and fabrics to Covered in Love.