Hands2Help and quilting along

Hello, quilty friends! I have a couple more finishes to share with you today. 

Moroccan Ornaments was made using the Quick Curve Mini ruler and a pretty charm pack. The metallic-accented fabrics feature flowers, gingko leaves, and butterflies. The charm pack made only 7 blocks, but they are fairly big at 14"x17". Offsetting the columns gave a bit of symmetry with the odd number of blocks, and a border of shiny gold brought the whole piece up to a smallish lap size.

I quilted it using a big hook and swirl motif. The backing is most of the last of this green Laura Ashley print that looks nice with a pale green Fairy Frost binding. Moroccan Ornaments will be donated to Happy Chemo as part of the Hands2Help charity challenge.

The next two quilts are quite small, only about 36" square. They are destined for Jack's Basket, which celebrates families with new Down Syndrome babies. This panel says "The day you were born, the world became a brighter place," which I think sums up the JB mission very well!

 

The Laurel Burch panel features cheerful pets and a big smiling sun face. It needed about 12" more in width, so I added some other Laurel Burch rainbow cat fabric, and a column of bright scrappiness left over from another piece.

The backing is this turquoise plaid. A quick, soft stipple of quilting and a reddish orange binding finish this piece up in a way that works for any happy baby!

The second baby quilt is my first ever tumbler project. I won a 5" tumbler template and a charm pack from Selina Quilts last year. It was fast and fun to trim the charms to the trapezoid shape and stitch them together, and the resulting patchwork is just a teensy bit fancier than simple squares.

In a bit of serendipity, this fabric featuring coffee cups was sitting out on my cutting table and I realized the colors matched the charms perfectly. It makes a fun border, doesn't it?

When I remembered I had the utensils to match the cups, of course that had to become the backing. The lime green polka dot makes a fine inner border and binding. Just darn tootin' cute, if I may say so myself! I'll definitely be making more tumbler quilts and have already started cutting scrappy ones for the next go-round.

Are you quilting along with Sandra and making her Beothuk Star pattern? It's fun and free, and not too late to join in. Five interlocking stars make a dynamic design, pretty neat! This week we are cutting our fabrics. My piece will revolve around the bright butterflies. They will be the center star and the yellow will be the background. 

But what is this? Looks like another fabric pull. My nephew and his lovely wife are expecting their first baby this fall, so of course I must make a quilt for the wee one. Beothuk Star finishes at 42" square, perfect baby size, so I figured I could just as easily make two quilts as one. The Mom-to-be loves teal and asked for gray as the neutral, so I pulled some fun aqua for the outer stars and the darker teal batik will be the bold center star. The gray Essex linen will be the background.

In other exciting news, our boat was hit by lightning while we sat at anchor Friday evening. My husband wrote up a blog post about the experience, including some video footage of the strike. Long story short, it went BOOM!!! but the damage was pretty minor. No fabric or sewing machines were harmed and the boat is operating at about 90% right now. In fact, as I type this we are underway between Fort Pierce, FL and somewhere in Georgia on a calm, lovely ocean. All is well!