Monday's child

Monday's child is fair of face... 

Hm, maybe "happy" more than "fair." How about this face from the back?

That might be a face that only an orthodontist could love. At least it's fair to say that Monday's child will have a happy quilt, though:

Tuesday's child is full of grace... 

She's posing on the back of her pink and aqua quilt!

Wednesday's child is full of...whoa!

She'll be riding this cute horse made by Carol:

And whoa! Is this the other end of that horse, or just an abstract design?

Thursday's child has far to go...

It's a good thing she'll have all these vehicles!

A few boats couldn't hurt, either, IMHO.

Friday's child is loving and giving... 

How could she not be, with this block surrounded by love, and filled with her favorite things?

Also? Sleepy giraffe!

Saturday's child works for her living... 

Maybe she works on a farm.

Maybe she wrangles horses with Wednesday's child.

Maybe she wrangles kittens instead. What a great job that would be!

And a child that's born on the Sabbath day, is fair and wise and good and gay.

That kind of sounds like Superman to me!

I hope you've enjoyed this poetic presentation of seven little quilts. They are mostly made from lotto blocks that were sewn by members of the Sunshine Online Guild or donated to me. Do you recognize any of your blocks? 

Each finishes at 42"x42" and will be donated to Little Lambs as part of the Hands2Help Comfort Quilt Challenge. Do you have a favorite?

And because I document all the backs of my pieces, here they are:

Monday's back

Tuesday's back

Wednesday's back

Thursday's back

Friday's back

Saturday's back

Sunday's back

Have a great week!

Disappearing Four Patch

I didn't take many photos of this piece, so this post will be short and sweet. Using Hawaiian shirt style fabrics, I made this lap-sized disappearing four patch for a friend. She recently moved into her own apartment after many years of living with family, and I thought that was worth celebrating with a quilt.

The back is white minky, which is soooo warm, soft and cuddly. Perfect for cold nights in the snowy area where she lives. The quilting shows up nicely on minky, too. I did a hook and swirl motif, one of my favorites. Quite relaxing to get in the zone of moving my hands...swirl, swirl, hook! Swirl, swirl, hook!

I mailed this gift off in late January, and I'm happy to report that my friend loves it. Her beautiful kitty seems pleased with it, too! How's that for a glamour shot?

More little quilts for little people

Baby and toddler quilts are just the most fun to make, aren't they? Here are three more that I finished recently. These penguins on parade were made with orphan blocks that I won as part of another blogger's give away. I'm sorry to say I can't find her contact info, alas. So let's just concentrate on how stinkin' cute those blocks are! I added scrappy blue and yellow strips and bits to fill in the background.

Here's a close-up of one of the dapper little guys and a peek at the back of the quilt. This one will probably go to Little Lambs as part of the Hands2Help challenge.

The next two quilts have both been sent off to Quilts Beyond Borders. This one is made from charm squares and a little orange background fabric. That same orange is the binding, too. The bright fabrics feature butterflies and various smiling bugs, giraffes, and peapods. Yes, peapods.

The back uses up some older yellow and green fabrics. I include the backings, even rather uninteresting ones, to help me remember what they look like. Sometimes the charities will share photos of children with their quilts, and all that shows is the backing, so it's helpful to document them.

The third quilt started with some HSTs that were given to me by Jan, The Colorful Fabriholic. The pretty browns and golds reminded me of a Laurel Burch horse panel I had tucked away.

I've loved Laurel's works for years, wearing her jewelry designs back in the 80's. I had no idea she also designed fabric until I became a quilter! I've been hoarding this panel for a while, and needed a little nudge to use it up. Many thanks to Jan for providing the blocks that inspired this little piece.

This fabric covered with horses is perfect for the back, don't you think? I scored a large lot of it that had been sewn into curtains. After unpicking a few seams and trimming off some faded areas, I ended up with several nice chunks. I hope a horse loving child enjoys this quilt!

Three for Covered in Love

I'm still catching up on quilts I finished in late 2020, and today's group are all for Covered in Love. I made them from orphan blocks, many sewn by Priscilla. This first one is made with blocks that I believe came from a tutorial over on Jo's Country Junction. Priscilla made 98 of them, and I added two more for a 10x10 layout.

I thought the colors looked good with some strips of train fabric I had in my stash, so I used that for borders. I couldn't figure out a good way to make the trains go around the corners, so I fussy cut a different fabric for cornerstones.

The backing is a big chunk of dark brown with a holly leaf motif, plus strips of the last of the trains. I hope this brings comfort to the family of a railroad enthusiast!

The second quilt started with a big pile of scrappy nine patches made by Priscilla. There was no particular color that stood out as dominant, so I did a little experiment. If I added purple and beige half square triangles, would it make the over all quilt extra purple-y? I think the answer is yes!

For the back, I pieced together a number of flannel fat quarters that were donated to Covered in Love. If you look closely, several have a bit of purple in them, too. It's very soft and cuddly with all that fuzzy flannel.

And finally, this quilt is made with the last blocks from a block drive from several years ago. I think this is called a Barn Raising layout. I put the four blocks with solid blue and green fabrics in the middle, and surrounded them with the softer florals. That made a square top a little too small for Covered in Love. It sat for a long time before I had the idea to add the strips of blue striped fabric at top and bottom to make a rectangle. I like the way it picks up that central bright blue, too.

Chunks of cream with a tiny red star, solid red, and the rest of the blue stripe make a rather modern backing. A solid red binding rounds it all out and gets these lingering orphan blocks to work spreading love and comfort.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge finishes

At the end of 2020, I finished up two RSC quilts. The blocks were made over the last several years, using up strings and crumbs. I find those types of scrap blocks a little chaotic unless I make them in a single color. This quilt is made from string blocks pieced on foundation paper. Since most junk mail is 8.5"x11", I cut the paper into 8.5" squares and trim the final block to that size, too.

I generally start my string block with a dark strip, say navy blue, then fill in one half of the square with darker shades of blue and the other half in lighter blues. Four blocks made like that can be put together into these diamonds. Since red and pink are two different RSC months, I separated them. Pink blocks use dark/hot and light/baby pinks. Red blocks use mostly red strips for the dark side, and neutrals with a little bit of red for the light side. There's a black and white block, too.

On the back of this quilt, I tried to match less-loved fat quarters in the same color as the block directly opposite on the front. I was mostly successful, but I doubt anyone would ever really notice. Mostly it just looks like a collection of rather ugly fat quarters!

The second quilt is made with crumb blocks. I seem to have lots and lots of crumb blocks, so rather than use all colors of the rainbow, I stuck with purple, pink and yellow in an ombre.

Each block has a sashing strip of black on two adjacent sides, and this sort of tumbling offset look is easy to achieve. Lots of fun little bits and bobs among the crumbs!

The back is also purple, pink and yellow. Both quilts were finished in late December 2020, and donated to Quilts Beyond Borders. 

Around the same time, we were anchored in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the local mall, there is an artificial tree with color-changing LEDs on each "leaf." The leaves slowly change colors in various patterns. The effect is spectacular! Here it is in red.

And here it is in rainbow. I've never seen anything like this before and we visited The Tree several times while in town. It's mesmerizing!