Lotto blocks

My latest finish is made almost completely by other people. All these 12" finished blocks were stitched by members of the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild. The lotto blocks for the month of July were pink and green, and I won the lotto!  A big stack of pink and green goodness arrived with our next batch of mail in August. 

The idea of setting them on point entered my brain and wouldn't leave. I picked out eight that looked nice at an angle and played well together, adding some hot pink sashing and setting triangles. Zip zoom, the top was finished.

This photo shows the colors much better, bright and saturated. And that block is one of my favorites! Finishing at 36"x52" this one struck me as a good candidate for a wheelchair quilt. 36" is a nice width so the quilt doesn't get caught in the wheels. I put a green and off white plaid on the back and quilted it up with floppy feathers in pink thread. A stripey binding finishes it off.

Because of the labeling requirements of various charities, I try to decide where a piece is going before I quilt it. For instance, both Wrap A Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders want labels with their names on them sewn onto the back. That's much easier to do before quilting. My own personal labels have machine wash and dry instructions on the back, so I don't use those on quilts going to other countries. My labels get sewn into the binding, like this.

The last few days we've been skedaddling south and in the open ocean off the shore of New Jersey. Unlike our trip north, the weather has been only OK, not great. The seas are rough enough that sewing is quite difficult, which hasn't stopped me from trying! After I fell off my sewing stool, though, I decided to just stick with a bit of fabric petting and organizing. And no, I didn't hurt my body, but my pride got a bit bruised. Nothing like finding yourself on your butt, wedged under your sewing machine, for tasting a little humble pie. Mmmmm, pie.

All my panels had been hanging in my clothes closet but were a bit "out of sight, out of mind." So I opened each one up, measured the size of the subpanels, folded them consistently, and labeled them. It was fun to remind myself what I have...lots of really cute stuff! I was also surprised to see that they take up less room folded like this than they did on the hangers.

And speaking of panels, while we were still at anchor in quiet waters, I put together this little top using some bright jungle animal panels. There weren't enough of them to fill out the entire quilt, so I augmented them with crumb blocks. 

For the non-quilty readers, crumb blocks are made with really small scraps sewn together willy-nilly then trimmed into neat squares. It's fun to see glimpses of things like cupcakes in the scraps. The crumbs were already trimmed larger than the animals, so I used the black polka dot sashing to make everything neat and tidy. This one is the next to be quilted, once we're back in calm seas!