Charity Quilt #7 using 2-1/2" strips and 6" blocks

This quilt was made with scraps donated to our charity group from a local bicycle skirt manufacturer.  I added some fabric from my stash to give it a little more tropical feel.  It started with 6" blocks and 2-1/2" strips.  The 2-1/2" strips were sewn together into super long strip sets (the pink and the black).  They were sewn to one side of the 6" block, pressed and trimmed.  And finally, the strip set was sewn to the other side of the 6" block, giving me 10" squares.  The quilt is 57-1/2" x 67".

I hope that somebody will love this quilt when they get it from our charity group!

Mariner's Compass and Pickle Dish Quilt - All Done!

This is the final installment of the Mariner's Compass and Pickle Dish Quilt.  I wrote so many blogs about the making of this quilt, and many of them probably showed my frustration with this very challenging pattern.  But, like most of my quilts, I loved it in the end.

Su Holmes quilted this one for me on her longarm machine.  She used a digital pattern called "Spiral Maze" designed by Krista Withers, who is a friend of mine from Seattle.  Krista used to do quilting for me and many of my friends in Seattle and Sammamish, but quit doing that and instead is designing modern digital quilting patterns.  I loved her work then and love her designs now!    

And thanks to Su, I now have a finished quilt.  It's 90" x 90" and I named it "In a Pickle".

I hope you love it too!

January charity quilts #6- Rock Star

 I've fallen in love with the book "Charm School" by Vanessa Goertzen.  This quilt that I made for our charity group is called Rock Star.  Vanessa made her quilt 69" x 81"; mine is 61" x 73".

It was really fun to pull out some of my old Hawaiian fabric to go with the donated fabric scraps by a local bicycle skirt manufacturer.  I used the same scraps cut into 2-1/2" strips for the outside border.

I hope you like it!

January Charity Quilt #5 - First Crush

After I got a huge pile of scraps from our charity quilt coordinator, I made a few more quilts in January.  Here is a pattern that I found in a book called "Charm School" by Vanessa Goertzen.  She called this one First Crush.  Her quilt was 72" x 84", but I made mine 60" x 72".  

It's more colorful in person, but I think you get the idea of what it looks like.  And I hope you like it!

More charity quilts

December is the month that I like to set aside to make quilts for charity.  I wrote a previous blog about 4 quilts that I made and donated to my quilt guild.  Guess what?  When I dropped them off with our coordinator, she asked me if I liked using scraps, and before I knew what I was saying, I said enthusiastically, "YES"!

"Oh good", she replied.  "Come on in and let's go into the charity quilt set-up in my garage."  One of our members had just dropped of 6 boxes - yes 6 boxes full - of scrap cotton fabric from a local manufacturer of bicycle skirts.  I didn't know that bicycle skirts were made of cotton, so I tried to back out, but she quickly assured me the fabric was all cotton.

You probably know what happened next.....

A huge pile of fabric ended up sitting on my drafting table, just waiting to be made into more quilt tops.  I think January will now also be a month for making quilts for charity.  Hey, what else am I going to do?  Everything is still shut down because of COVID-19, and we can't go and visit anybody and they can't come and visit us.

I hope you are also finding things to keep you occupied (and productive).💚

Placemats

Do you have as many ideas floating around in your head as I have?  I swear that I will have to live to be 100 just in order to sew up all the things that I want to make!

I have several sets of placemats that I use seasonally.  My Christmas placements have a holiday theme on one side and plain red fabric on the other side, so they last through Valentines.  The fall ones have a Halloween theme on one side and orange fabric on the other side, so they go from the fall through Halloween.  But for much of the year, I don't have any that I have made and use store bought placemats.  Not that there is anything wrong with buying them, but they are looking ratty and I wanted to make some more.

Two yards of fabric makes 4 placements.  One yard is for the front, and one yard is for the back.  You also need 1 yard of lightweight batting. (And material for binding.)

Cut the fabric into 4 rectangles, apx. 14" x 20" (assuming your fabric is 36" x 42").  

Layer one fabric on the bottom, right side facing down, one layer of batting, and one layer of fabric, right side facing up.  Quilt as you like and stitch around the outside edge.  Apply binding. (I zig zagged the edges on one of the new sets, but don't recommend it as an edge finish!)

And voila!  There you have 4 placements that are two sided. 

Here is a set that I made for spring, showing both sides:

And here is a set that I made for summer, showing both sides:

I hope that you like them! 

P.S. Here is why I didn't like the zig zag edging:

I had to steam press them and spray them with starch to get them to lay flat.  Over time, I will have to do that every time they get washed too.  😕

Charity quilts #3 & 4

 Here are the 3rd and 4th quilts going to charity.

I hope you like them!