Three for the Navajo Nation

Today's finishes were all made for the charity Quilts Beyond Borders. As one of their many initiatives, each year around Christmas they distribute quilts to people living on Navajo lands.

While many of the folks receiving QBB quilts are children, the Navajo ones are also distributed to adults. So these pieces are a little bit larger than usual. I made this one after seeing a photo of a similar quilt. It's two sizes of HSTs, set so the lights and darks make a criss-cross pattern.

The fabrics are modern, yet fun, and include stars, cats, lemons, fish and other random whimsies.

The back is this nice leaf fabric in primary colors on white, plus some scraps from the front. The leaves are fancy organic cotton, but I bought yardage for a song on eBay. It should get softer and cuddlier with each washing!

The second quilt is the pattern Magic Stars. I first saw this fun design on Joy's blog when she featured a tutorial by Tiffany. It's a great way to use a layer cake, and I had this fun batik set in purple, orange and turquoise. I also had a swirly purple and orange fabric that made a pretty border to get the size right for an adult lap.

The Magic Stars look like a child's drawing of the sun to me, so I emphasized that with quilting. Swirls in the center and dot-to-dot triangles around the sun rays.

The pattern made 10 big star blocks, which is an awkward number. So I set nine of them in a square layout and put the tenth on the back with some coordinating purple fabrics.

I was quite happy with that backing, right up until I was basting the quilt sandwich and realized it was just a smidge too small. How big is a smidge? About as wide as these tiny strips of purple on one edge. That's how much more I needed to add, sigh. You can see the fun purple and orange plaid binding in this photo, too.

And finally, this quilt is an eBay bonus buy. While looking for larger chunks of yardage to use as backings, I found a listing for about 20 yards of chambray, red bandana print, and red/black check. Perfect! Also included were some 12" blocks made of the same fabrics. Well, heck, I can use those, too! All I had to do was add sashing, cornerstones and borders and this little quilt just sewed itself.

Many of the blocks also included this running horse print. This block included most of the horse, but several stand alone horse butts are also featured. I hope that will amuse the recipient as much as it did Sean!

I used some of the chambray and bandana for the backing, and the binding is the check. I have tons of all three left over for more backings. Even though these fabrics were probably originally from the late '90s/early 2000s, the designs are timeless.

So there you go, three quite different quilts heading west to provide warmth, comfort and perhaps some entertainment. Which one is most your style?