Quilts for Rock Stars

Sometimes it's fun to sew for the other end of life :) Jack's Basket is my new favorite charity for kid quilts. They welcome new babies with Down Syndrome with a gift basket and encouragement for their parents.

They appreciate baby quilts to add to their baskets and I'm just about to mail off these 6. It's been fun to do some smaller quilts and put old UFOs to good use. The herringbone string blocks, above, were originally intended to be a larger quilt but they've been sitting a looong time.

"Made from 360 tiny pieces. Small things make a huge impact."

I made customized labels for each one. The strings and small squares got similar labels about the big impact of small things.  Hopefully something that will resonate with the parents.

This is the block I asked for from my do. Good Stitches group this month. (Block source) I got into my scraps and cut enough little squares to make a baby quilt and then some.

This guitar has been hanging around a while.

It was the first thing I sewed last year after my eyes recovered enough to make out the lines on a ruler after eye surgery. I had no intentions for it, I was just getting stir crazy to sew!

I paired it with some cool fabrics and made a label that says "Already a rock star!" (With the nerd glasses and the bow ties maybe I should have said "already a hipster singer/songwriter" but that doesn't have the same ring.)

Last, I made 3 of these black and white and bright quilts. I had cut string scraps down to 2.5" for binding, but had way more than I needed. Plus white fabrics aren't ideal for binding.

I sewed them together jelly roll race style with bright scraps in between.  (I also incorporated some of the skinny strings I cut before). Nicki was so generous to give me to permission to use some of the binding she has sent in for CiL.  I had dyed some rainbow and it was so perfect for these quilts. (Besides Nicki's bindings all the rest of the materials for these quilts came from my stash, nothing donated to Covered in Love).

"You are a rainbow in a world of black and white."  A rainbow, and that's the truth!  Can't wait to get these in the mail.


Kitten update: they're doing fantastic and getting ready to go to their long term homes!

Waffles and Fudge end a play session with a nap

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 400 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on 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

This and That Scraps

There's been lots of activity on my design wall lately.  My body celebrated my return to Texas in right fashion by developing a cold, so I haven't felt up for the hours-long process of basting and quilting tops.  Instead I sewed a few little things, arranged and rearranged the design wall, and put together backings for various tops for when I do feel up to it again (thanks you to Louise, Gail, Nancy, Amanda, and others of you who have generously contributed backing fabrics!)

I put up some of the hot and cold corner blocks to just see how they look and it's even better than I hoped! These won't be sewn together until the last of the stragglers are here. (By the way, if you're looking for the January block drive for CiL it's HERE). I also sewed up several more string herringbone blocks from my 1.5" strings. 

I'm actually running out of the string scraps I'd cut (don't worry, there's more! I just haven't trimmed them yet), so I switched to another old scrap project, these small pinwheels.  I started sewing the fourpatches into chains and putting them on the wall. I'm trying to avoid doing math as much as possible by just building it in place.

After some debate I decided to cut my setting triangles from scraps instead of white fabrics, so I cut 6.5" squares from my scrap piles today.  Cutting a 6.5" square into quarters lets me make setting triangles with no bias stretch on the outside edge.

I sewed up the corners as they are so far with the setting triangles in place.   It's a crappy night-time picture, but what do you think?  I'm a fan of the colored triangles for the edge.  Of course my quilting supervisors have been hard are work.  They're trying not to let on too much, but I think they missed me, too!

By the way, don't miss the 2016 Year in Review post about Covered in Love.

Linking to Oh Scrap! and Design Wall Monday.

More String Maddness

 For about the past year I haven't sewn many blocks for each of the CiL block drives.  I always test the blocks and make a demo block or two, and of course if I wind up a couple short of a whole quilt I make up the difference, but beyond that I usually don't make any more.  You fine folks have done such a good job of supplying blocks for the quilts! And knowing that I will soon be sewing so many of them, it keeps me from getting burned out, I think.  However, I do often find myself wanting to sew along a similar tangent. Something inspired by the blocks piling up on my desk.

Just before October, when the CiL string block drive officially began, I trimmed up the strings in my scrap box and set to work on bright and loud string log cabins.  That quilt is about wrapped up now and yet I still have plenty of strings!  Next up? I'm trying something like a string herringbone.  Here are the first dozen blocks on the wall. What do you think?  I'm not sold yet.  With my glasses off the herringbone effect is really prominent and I like it, but in-focus the lines between the blocks catch my eye much more than the herringbone.

Linking to Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday, and Moving it Forward Monday.