Giving to Charity

My quilting friends and I have been working for the past 6 months or so on some Charity quilts and I wanted to share them with you.

I found out about a home in our city where young women who are going through a hard time can go when they are pregnant or just had a baby.  They have another group of women donating quilts for the babies and I thought it would be nice to be able to do something for the young moms.  So we are making quilts for them to put on their beds and use while they are staying at the home, but that they can then take with them when they are ready to leave.

There are 15 beds at the home so for our first donation we have dropped off 15 quilts.  We wanted to make sure all of the girls get a quilt. 

There are 9 of us participating in various ways in the making of these quilts.  Some donated fabric from our stash, some donated orphan blocks, some pieced the tops, some quilted, some did the bindings.  We all chipped in to buy the batting.  Some of us even had some quilt tops that we didn't want anymore and donated those.

It was fun to see how Alice put Betty's orphan blocks together with Rita's fabric! It's been a great group project and a lot of fun getting rid of some of our old fabrics and UFO's at the same time.

We will be making more and bring them as they are done so that when new girls come to stay at the home, they get a quilt too.

My mom and I dropped the quilts off earlier this week.  The ladies who work at the home were so happy with our donation.  They are going to let the girls pick their own quilt, so they can have something they like.

It feels so good to give! I highly recommend it if you can do it too.

A Princess Quilt

When my friend saw the Princess quilt I made last year, she put in an order for me to make one for her new grand daughter. So we talked earlier this year and she said she wanted it for the baby's first birthday.

Her birthday is today and she is having a tea party with her friends and I hope she will love her Princess Quilt!

When I laid out the blocks to assemble the top, my 8 year old was quick to point out that Tinkerbell is NOT a Princess! But I just had to include her in the quilt because my daughters were big Tink fans and this little girl is only 1, so we don't yet know who her favourite will be! Right?

This quilt is the size of a lap quilt. So she will be able to use it on her bed when she graduates to a toddler bed. That's what Grandma wanted.

I bought the patterns for the blocks from the Etsy shop called Chi Town Stitching.

The hardest part was picking the fabrics.

I am sure she will love her quilt for a long time.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Retreat!

I went on a quilt retreat last weekend! Oh it felt good to get together with some Quilty friends to share patterns, tips and tricks, recipes, but it felt especially good to get some work done on some WIPS.

First I finished the Vintage Quilt I've been working on for the king size bed we got last Spring.

Vintage quilt

I used fat quarters from the Nordika fabric line by Jeni Baker for the blocks. The background is a solid white, and the border is a grey Modern Background Essentials by Zen Chic. I'm looking forward to quilting it!

I also started putting my In From The Cold quilt blocks together and got the first borders on too. But I didn't get a picture so I will keep you in suspense until the top is finished.

Here are a couple of the quilts my friends finished while we were there.

Betty's Tablecloth Quilt

Elaine's Ribbon Box Quilt

Charity Quilt

There were many more great projects but these were the only ones I got pictures of.

It's always good to have a little vacation from home and get to work on some sewing for me. It was just a great pick me up. And I got some great inspiration from my friends as well!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Fall Table Runner

Fall has finally arrived so I thought I would share this table runner I finally got out of the WIP pile.

Fall table runner

I made this runner with scraps a few years ago and had brought to my moms for her to quilt. For some reason it never got quilted and she found it a few weeks ago when she cleaned out one of the closets in her studio.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to practice doing some custom work with the computer designs on the Statler.

Close-up of quilting

I picked a feather block design for the blocks, a leaf design for the sashing, my favourite orange peel for the corner stones and some beautiful maple leaves for the border.

It took me all day to quilt this little table runner. The longest part I think is picking the designs but then trying to get them to fit inside the spaces takes a lot of time and patience as well.

I am really happy with the end result. It was great practice and I have a nice new table runner for the fall.

I am linking up to TGIFF over at Crazydutchbirdquilts

 

Posted with Blogsy

Back in the Swing of Things

I realized yesterday that I started this blog 5 years ago.  I just checked and it was 5 years ago, this week actually.  So I have decided that since it's the fall, a time to get back into routines and new schedules and such, it would also be a good time for me to get back into blogging.  

I hope I still have a few followers out there willing to read my posts and check out my quilting projects.  And since I have changed things in my little world of quilting as I have started quilting some quilts for others, I hope you won't mind me sharing some of my customers quilts on here too.  Some of the quilts I have quilted over the past few months have been fun and I would love to share them with you.

Alison's "Aviatrix Medallion"

Kaaren's "Stopped Me In My Tracks" Quilt

Of course you can always find me on my Facebook page and on Instagram where I post stuff regularly as well, but I will be making a real effort to post here more regularly and share with you some of the fun stuff I will be working on for me and my customers.  

So to start, how about a fabric pull... I am participating in a mystery quilt with my Guild.  Here is my fabric pull for the Mystery Quilt.

Fabric pull