Other people's scrappy blocks

Once again I've been busy sewing and not so busy blogging, and it's time to play catch up! Today I want to share with you two quilts that were made with blocks that other people made. My task was to put them together and finish the quilt.

Aren't these colors pretty? Melinda stitched up the scrappy string blocks from her stash. She has some gorgeous fabrics!

Each block has the same white center strip. I set the blocks into diamond shapes.

The quilting is a simple petal shape in each diamond, using pale green thread, plus ditch stitching around the white sections.

These blocks were all donated to Covered in Love, and Kat sent them to me. She also gets donations of yardage. I thought this zigzag fabric looked good for the back.

The binding is a lime green with tiny white hearts from my own stash.

I also used that green to piece between the zigzag yardage. This allowed me to piece in the CiL label and more importantly, avoid matching all those tiny jaggedy lines!

This quilt was super fun to puzzle together. All the blocks are left over from CiL's annual red, white and blue star block donation drive.

This star is made of appliqued hearts. So pretty and clever!

Some of the blocks were odd sizes, so creative use of sashing, borders, and cornerstones was necessary.

This one reminds me of a buzz saw blade. I really like the bandana-esque fabric, too.

Kat included some larger chunks of red, white and blue that I pieced into the backing with the label. My goal is to use as many of the donated pieces as possible in Covered in Love quilts, with only the tiniest final scraps ending up in my own stash.

I put these three blocks on the back, along with a large chunk of donated yardage. If you zoom in, you can see faint blue and red stars and swirls printed on the white. This is actually the reverse side of the fabric. The front is printed in really pretty, sparkly metallic ink. However, the ink was quite rough feeling, and I decided that the smooth backside would feel better against the skin of the recipient. 

A thin red inner border, a scrappy squares outer border, and a scrappy dark blue binding complete the piece. Most of those fabrics were donated, too, with a few additions of my own.

I had so much fun putting together these quilts and the ones I wrote about last month! I told Kat she could send me her Covered in Love orphan blocks any time. She has since sent me more blocks, over 10 pounds' worth. We think there could be a dozen quilts lurking in there! More on those in another post.