I get by with a little help...

...from my friends. Hello! Louise here with some quilts that were started by friends of Covered in Love, and finished by me. These only needed a little help, making my job easy.

First up is this great modern turquoise quilt. Diane N. started this top and made all the cool striped squares with a single fabric cut into triangles. Look at how perfectly the stripes match up. Wow! The original design started out on point and looked like it would finish king size or even bigger. HUGE! It came to me still in pieces, about 3 or 4 diagonal rows, and with extra stripe for the binding. I kind of deconstructed it back into a straight set design and had enough to make both the front and back from the original top. Thanks for your donation, Diane!

The next four tops arrived all pieced and pretty, but just a smidge too small. All I had to do was add a border or two, baste, quilt and bind. This classic, scrappy coin quilt was pieced by Irene. The pretty blue fabric with birds was donated and picks up the burgundy of Irene's sashing. Thank you so much for this sweet top, Irene!

Barb donated several of her lovely churn dash tops, and this is the second one I've finished. Her tops are always nice and flat and square. Thanks, Barb!

A close up of some of the pretty florals she used, and the chicken fabric I put on the back. Regular readers know how much I love a good chicken fabric. Cluck, cluck!

This Trip Around the World top from Frances B. ended at the outer black sashing. I love how she used half square triangles in the corners. I knew a red outer border was the way to go, but had nothing appropriate in my stash until I visited a friend's guild in St. Petersburg, FL. The perfect red plaid was on the give-away table and I nabbed it for Frances' quilt.

This fun fishing lure print makes a great backing, and I hope it appeals to a fly fisherman. Thank you, Frances!

Isn't this an interesting block? I'd never seen it before when I received this top pieced by Jo K. It arrived with the small grey border and I just couldn't decide what to use for the outer border. I pulled about six different fabrics to audition and my husband immediately chose the orange. I call him my "color consultant" and he's rarely wrong! Thanks to Jo for the fun top.

This soft and lovely quilt was donated as a group of blocks. Kat usually lets me know who donated the blocks, but I think these were anonymous. If you recognize them, leave a comment so we can thank you!

All the blocks were pieced from the same floral fabric, using the four-patch kaleidoscope technique. Here's a tutorial if you're interested. It makes all unique blocks that completely coordinate with each other. I only needed to add the sashing and borders for a pretty finish. Easy!

And speaking of easy, Julie S. sure made things easy for me with this donation! She had carefully cut each pair of triangles and pinned them together, plus included a photo of the pattern that inspired her. I had several peaceful days of happily stitching the blocks together, then laying them out, no heavy duty thinking required.

I love all these true blues. Julie has a great sense of color. I quilted all the blue triangles in blue thread and the white ones with white thread. You can hardly tell, though, so maybe I won't do that again, ha! Still, I really enjoyed this piece. Thanks, Julie!

I'll end with this quilt made from blocks and precut fabric from an anonymous donor. She (or he?) included a copy of the "Circus Compass" pattern, from Quilt Now magazine. Once again, all the thinking had been done for me and all I needed to do was keep making blocks! Fortunately, the blocks are huge so I only needed to make a few.  

I added some of my own pale blue and red fabrics plus the outer border. The fabric line is "Jane Austen at Home" by Riley Blake, which is really lovely, high-quality stuff. Soft and sweet!

Many thanks to everyone who donates tops, blocks, fabric, and patterns to Covered in Love. I'm so lucky to work with such a huge variety of raw materials to make these comforting quilts!

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 1000 so far! The September/October block drive is live now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved. 

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

Your donations, ready to go!

Hello, friends! Louise here to share another batch of quilts made from your donated orphan blocks, tops, and fabric. The variety of what passes through my hands on the way to comfort families never ceases to delight me! Let's jump right in with these neutral hexagons, made by Julie S. Isn't this soft and soothing? Julie's top was just a smidge small when it arrived. She had already bordered it with scrappy 3" neutral squares and rectangles, so I pulled a few more from my stash and just added another round to bring it up to size. 

I quilted it by filling each hexagon with either a wishbone or swirl motif. My husband calls the latter the Eye of Sauron! You can see that best in the darker caramel colored block above. The overall effect is just soft and subtle and I really enjoyed finishing this piece.

This bright checkerboard was pieced by Frances B, using mostly polka dot fabrics. She donated it as long strips plus extra color squares. I ripped a few seams to get all the rows the same length and added enough of my own white squares to fill in the few needed for a nice size. I quilted it with an eccentric orange peel that is super forgiving and fun to do.  Any color binding would have worked with all this color but I chose ha-cha-cha hot pink!

Aren't these scrappy hexagons fun? Priscilla pieced all these blocks, using a pattern called "Around the Block" by Bonnie Hunter. Each center square requires a partial seam. This donation also showed up as long rows and I only needed to sew them together into the finished top. Priscilla even carefully labeled each row, one through nine, left end and right end, although I think I might have reversed one. Oops!  And once again, I could have chosen any color for the binding, so bright blue stepped up to the plate. Gotta love scrappy!

This bright I-spy color block quilt was super fun to put together. It's made of 120 different little 6" blocks that were clearly pieced by the same person. Shout out in the comments if that person is you!  Each little block has a solid color background that surrounds either a friendship star, house or square. 

Most have fussy cut centers, so fun! I decided to group these darling little blocks into groups of four with the same or similar backgrounds, to give the quilt a color block look. Then I quilted each four block patch in a back-and-forth motif with thread in the same color as the solid. Lots of thread changes, but I enjoyed using so much of my thread collection. The quilting gives lots of yummy texture for super cuddliness!

The final two quilts were donated as fabric, not blocks or tops. It's a nice change of pace for me to sew some from start to finish sometimes. This one was a kit donated with all the fabric and the printed pattern called "Antelope Canyon." It was neat to see the secondary pattern of interlocking circles appear when the four quadrants were finally sewn together. It's a big 74"x74" beast, which is really the upper limit of what I can handle on my domestic sewing machine. 

I made this modified rail fence design from two donated jelly rolls. The blues and greens are from a Jo Morton fabric line, and I supplemented them with another jelly roll of creams for a masculine feeling quilt. 

I had a big chunk of dark brown with holly leaves for the back, and pieced it with a nice donated panel featuring game birds. I love putting panels on the backs of quilts as a little surprise for the recipient!

Do you have a favorite in this batch? Are you called more to the brights or the neutrals? Share your thoughts in the comments, and once again, thank you for the opportunity to work with so many lovely donations!