Three Years Later {Tall 9 Block Drive Wrap Up}

Happy Friday, Quilters, and Happy New Year! At long, long last the Sept 2021 Fall Tall Nines block drive has wrapped up. Only 3.3 years after it launched. This was a HUGE block drive and these blocks have been my nemesis. Every time I thought they were all quilted up I would find more.

These first two quilts were made from donated blocks by Cynthia with Many Hands Many Hearts. She chose a nice fall-ish panto with leaves and pumpkins for the first one.

This second one, also quilted by Cynthia, has straight lines. I am always a fan of geometric quilting. 

These last three tops were all made by Donna and quilted by Sundance. 

I've enjoyed working with Sundance Quilting this past year to help finish CiL quilts and I do recommend them if y'all are looking for an affordable commercial longarmer. They've been wonderful to work with.

This drive produced almost 50 quilts, which is CiL's largest drive ever by a large margin. 

Obviously it's wonderful to be so supported and be able to bless so many grieving families with quilts, but it did make me quite overwhelmed with the task of getting them all assembled and quilted. 

Many thanks to the dozen or so folks who helped to get these done over the past three years. They're beautiful quilts and if I were going to choose a block drive to go over the top there couldn't have been a better one. 

The new block drive for Jan-March 2025 has just started, you can find the link at the very bottom of this page, if you want to join in!

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in this block drive, nearly 100 of you! I can't wait to see what we make in 2025.

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 1600 so far! The Jan-March block drive is live now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved. 

 Linking to Finished or Not Friday

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

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

Another Block Drive

 Hello quilty friends :) As you have heard, the Covered in Love block drive is currently taking a break over the holidays. I know this is a time of year when many people don't have a lot of time for quilting, but there are also a lot of you who are jonesing for something to do!

With perfect timing, Cynthia at Quilt is More Fun Than Housework has decided to start another program similar to CiL where she lives! She will be supporting her local hospital's Palliative Care Program as well as some other needs with quilts.  

She's just posted her first block drive request and if would make me really happy if you would send her lots of blocks! The block drive is super simple and in great colors (well, some of my favorite colors.) You can find all the details on Cynthia's blog HERE. 

Cynthia has been a great supporter of Covered in Love. Every year she takes some of our blocks to finish into quilts. She also guest-hosted a block drive once while I was out of town.  She's the best and I am thrilled she's taking the CiL concept and applying it locally!  Please visit her blog and think about making some blocks.

More from Cynthia

This week we are featuring more lovely quilts by Cynthia of Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework. First up is this scrappy piece of her own design. She has donated all of these to comfort families through Covered in Love.

These churn dashes in a rainbow of colors are so fun!

She also donated these happy, spinning pinwheels. The blocks, set on point, alternate with a pretty floral that extends into the border to make the pinwheels float. Classic!

In addition to putting together her own blocks, Cynthia also helps us by laying out and finishing blocks from our bimonthly block drives. These next four pieces are from the last red, white and blue star block drive. 

The first two she set with sashing. She carefully chose stars with darker backgrounds to contrast against the light sashing in this one. 

And for the red sashing piece, she selected stars with white backgrounds. Very clever and effective!

In this close up you can see the very fun star motif quilting, too. Cynthia blogged about these two sashed quilts here if you'd like to see more photos, including the backings.

In this next quilt, Cynthia was able to use an odd number of blocks by staggering the columns. The flag fabric at the ends of every other column was donated to Covered in Love. In her post about the offset blocks, she said, "I really liked how staggering the blocks made all those stars look like they were floating." I love this idea!

And finally, she designed this neat medallion quilt. Writing about going through the box of blocks and fabric that Kat sent her here, Cynthia said, "Two things I noticed in my supplies was that there were a lot of friendship star blocks with white backgrounds.  There was also a piece of a great flag fabric.  I instantly had an idea and I just had to decide what stars I would use for the center.  I spied these red stars someone made, and I instantly started sewing." Do you find it interesting to read about other quilter's design process and how they get inspired? If so, you should definitely check out her blog.

Many thanks to Cynthia for all her lovely donations!

 

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 

Fall Colors Finishes from Cynthia

This week we are featuring quilts from Cynthia of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework. She laid out and finished four beautiful quilts from last fall's block drive. Let's take a look at these gorgeous pieces.

This one and the one at the top of the post are similar, but the quilting is different. The top one has simple straight and wavy lines.

The second one has a swirling wind kind of motif. So much texture!

In the third quilt, it looks like she chose the blocks that had biggest leaf prints in them. She said, "People sure have some lovely leaf fabrics in their stash!" I agree whole heartedly! 

What a great leaf quilt pattern, too. Perfect for these fabrics, don't you think?

Cynthia said, "For this one, I alternated the direction of the blocks.  This is different than the way the blocks were designed.  I always like to mix it up and see if I can see any alternate patterns emerge."

It looks like a completely different pattern this way, doesn't it? Here's a close up of her pretty quilting, another leafy pantogram. Do you see any of your blocks in Cynthia's quilts? Let us know in the comments.

Many thanks to Cynthia for her hard work on these beautiful pieces. You can see more photos of these quilts, including the backings, on Cynthia's blog: Post #1, Post #2, Post #3, and Post #4. Cynthia also hosts the "Oh, Scrap!" weekly linkup, so make sure you check out the rest of her blog while you're there. Lots of inspiration to be had!

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 

Fiddlesticks Quilts 1.5

Hello quilters! I hope your July 4th weekend was fun and your pets weren't too traumatized! I have 5 quilts to show you from last Fall's Fiddlesticks block drive. These are the first quilts finished from the block drive donations, previously I posted and showed you the quilt that Linda D. made, which you can see here.

These first two quilts were assembled and quilted by Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework back in February.  You can see her post about them with more pictures here and here. 

These next three were assembled and quilted by Pam M. from Arizona who has been lending her time and talents lately to help.  As you can see, Fudge lent his time and talents as well...

A few weeks ago in this post I shared about some of my favorite Youtube channels with you and I want to tell you about another one I rediscovered recently.  I spent time watching Dianxi Xiaoge's channel a few years ago but recently started watching again. 

She's is a young lady from the Yunnan Province, which is in Southern China near Tibet and Myanmar.  The channel is mostly about traditional cooking and ways of life. Watch with closed captions because it's not in English, but mostly it's without talking and set to music anyway.  It's definitely very relaxing.

The area she lives in stunningly beautiful and rural. It's mountainous with streams and forests and ancient architecture. Families live in hundred-year-old multigenerational homes and share communal meals.  The methods of cooking are a blend of modern (I've seen her use a blender) and medieval (all cooking is over fire). Without refrigeration everything that needs to be preserved is pickled, fermented, cured, or dried.  It's a window into a way of life that has changed very little in hundreds of years.  She also has this hilarious giant dog that follows her around :)

I picked out this video about making Tofu as a good introduction to her channel if you want to try it.  (I think what they are translating as Dry Tofu is what we call Firm Tofu, as opposed to Silken).

PS - I'm aware of the sociopolitical issues in China and I know that this channel is only on Youtube because the Chinese government allows it and considers it good publicity.  I know that these people have electricity and a TV and obviously nice camera equipment and a computer for editing.  I just enjoy the channel and take it for what it's worth and as historical lifestyle and cooking.

A house of cards made from alcohol swabs.  Clearly my nursing students find my lectures very engaging! (Just kidding, this was during a break.)

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 800 so far! The July/August drive is running 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