Covered in Love times six

Time for a quick catch-up post on what I've been working on. These six quilts were finished in June and July and I just shipped them off to Kat. This first one was made almost completely with scraps from Jan of The Colorful Fabriholic. They were leftovers from the very cool piece she made for her guild's Color Spoke Challenge. I grouped them by size and added a few more touches of the magenta. Then I set two quadrants of the quilt in black background and two in white.

The back used up some chunks of black, white and gray fabrics that have been in my stash for a while. I also had some strips with sweet and encouraging sayings on them; that fabric was donated to CiL and I hope it brings some encouragement to a family. 

Fabric designs that are half black/half white like these on the back seem to be very hard to use in piecing for me. I like them, I buy them, but then never use them. If you have any advice on ways to incorporate high contrast fabrics like this, let me know! 

This Star-Fish quilt was made from two different CiL donations that happened to be sitting next to each other on my work surface one day. The 13 free-form stars are made from soft, pretty batiks and came to me as rectangles. I don't know who stitched them, but I love them! The three fish panels with white backgrounds came from someone else, but the colors are an exact match to the stars. That made 16 blocks, hm, a 4x4 layout could wo4k. Then I remembered I had another fish panel with similar colors and could make four more block from that. 4x5 was a much better size and a quilt was born.

The back is just fat quarters in the same sherbet shades as the front. I also pulled those colors from my bin of 2.25" strips for a scrappy binding. 

This fun quilt is made with a combination of blocks from me and Cathy of Crazy by Design. I think her blocks might be from the book Farmhouse Vintage? They include the bee, flower and hand mixer. Aren't those super cute? They ended up as orphan blocks in her stash because they weren't exactly 12.5", and we all know how that goes, don't we? I have my own selection of 12.0", 11.75" and 11.4785726" blocks that are hoping for friends of the same size to come out and play.

I grouped blocks of the same width together and sewed them into columns. Then I offset the columns to hide the fact that each column is a little different height. Your eye sees the stairstep design but can't perceive the slight differences. Of course, MY eye sees my blocks with crappy contrast, so I'm glad Cathy's fun blocks dominate the scene! The background gray is printed with the names of all fifty US states.

The back is a large chunk of stylish ladies on Vespas that I've been hoarding for years. Some of you may know that we have motorscooters that we carry with us on the top of the boat so I love all things scooter-related. Time to get that cute fabric out into the world to comfort a family.

This autumnal piece was donated by Christy and sewn by a friend of hers. It came with a big extra chunk of the red and brown leaf fabric. I'm guessing that it was made in the early 2000s? It is a very complicated design, with most of the blocks being cut on the bias. Blocks that had NO BUSINESS being bias. Maybe it was a mystery quilt along and each piece was so unusual there would be no way to guess the final design? I don't know, but I feel for the gal who tried to make this beast lie flat. The combination of so many bias edges and the super soft plaid flannel made the top wavy gravy. Roly poly. A sea of rumples, kind of like the Maine waters we're cruising right this minute.

I removed the entire outer border to get back to some semblance of flatness, and used the leftover pieces to make the quilt rectangular. Then I "quilted the life into it," as the saying goes! I find that when I'm fighting with a quilt top, or feeling bad that I chopped off some points, or I'm not loving the colors, it really helps to do more extensive and/or custom quilting. 

 

This classic looking quilt started as a batch of Priscilla's orphan blocks. Priscilla's piecing is always precise and perfect. They are also delightfully scrappy, with no one color dominating at all. A little sashing, a few cornerstones, and this top came together lickety split. I think Nicki made the pretty green floral binding, all nicely pre-pressed and ready to go. 

The back is an eBay find that I think was supposed to be a lightweight bed cover. It came to me as a single piece of cotton, 120"x120". 

And finally, some rainbow fun! This quilt was made by me with a batik jelly roll donated to CiL. It's just a simple rail fence, and a few borders, but there's something about rainbow order that always makes me smile. The last batch of donations that Kat sent me contained four jelly rolls, so I'm on the lookout for more good patterns to use them up. Let me know in the comments if you have a pattern you like!

This big chunk of solid orange was also donated and makes a great back for such a bright front. I hope it ends up in the hand of an orange lover.

I got confirmation from Kat yesterday that she received the big box containing these quilts, so soon they can go to work doing the serious business of comforting grieving families. I have a batch of baby/toddler quilts to share with you next, so stay tuned! And thanks for your understanding while I was on blog hiatus.