Little quilts for little people

Hello, hello! How are you? I hope you've been safe and well. Things are fine aboard the good ship Vector as we make our way slowly north this summer. I've been quilting along steadily and have a big batch of little finishes to share with you. First up is this jungle quilt, made with a tiger panel. One of my Sunshine Quilt Guild-mates sent it along. She had 3 or 4 of them and it was fun to see how folks used the panel.

She also included the chunk of tigers that I used in the upper left side of the backing. This quilt will go to Wrap-a-Smile (WAS.)

This quilt is also made with a panel. The cute sheep in the center were made to be a growth chart, so there were inch and feet marks up the left side. I just cut that part off and added some scrappy hour glass blocks. This one is also headed to WAS.

The back is nothing special, just a couple of pieces of green that coordinated with both front and binding. You'll see a photo of the back of each of my pieces here, no matter how boring. Why? Because occasionally the charities that I donate to will publish a photo of a quilt being used by a child, and only a glimpse of the back is visible. Twice now I've spotted one of my pieces this way, which is SUCH a thrill! I use my blog to document the fronts and the backs to help me remember them.

Next up is this super duper scrappy quilt in red hot colors. The blocks are made of crumbs that I stitched together during last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I bordered two sides of each block with scrappy brown strips and there is lots to look at in this quilt!

The back is a strip of the same bright orange as the binding, and a couple of the cartoon characters from "Cars." I don't usually buy licensed character fabrics, but this chunk was part of a bigger lot and I admit the goofy cars make me smile. I hope it will also make a child smile! It will be donated to Quilts of Compassion.

Here's a tiny quilt! Only 36"x42", it used up the last of some pretty rainbow butterfly fabric I've had kicking around. I also had a charm pack of solids that were juuuuust right with the butterflies. A bit of plaid bordering and voila! Just right for a new baby.

The back is a single piece of hot pink with cute little bugs on it. DH's feet are included because, well, why not? I think he's as cute as a bug. This one will also go to Quilts of Compassion (the quilt, not the husband.)

And here's a third quilt for the same charity, which gives quilts to people affected by disasters. It features a panel with elegant ladies and gentlemen. I added rows of 16-patches and snowball blocks in the same soft pinks, purples, yellows and greens.

Here's a close-up of the panel. Isn't it fun? I like to think these are young couples who have just fallen in love, and hope the quilt ends up in the arms of a starry-eyed child. 

The back is a single piece of urban row houses in the same color palette. Could it be New York? Paris? It's where all these couples live, of course!

OK, on to even smaller quilts. The next three are tiny doll quilts, and will be donated to A Doll Like Me. The first two were made with just a handful of small blocks left over from other projects. Sometimes I use blocks like that on the back of a quilt, but these lent themselves to finished quilts in their own right. I like the soft pastels of this piece.

The back shows my swirly quilting, and is a rather thin piece of peppered or shot cotton. 

This one is scrappy floral blocks bound in dark green for a summer garden feel.

An old fashioned ditsy white with black somethings (flowers?) fit the back just fine. Doll quilts are a great way to use up scraps of batting, too.

And finally, the last doll quilt is perfectly square. I know it doesn't look that way! We waited a long time for a calm, bright morning to take photos and the wind kicked up right at the end. These little pieces really can get flapping in the breeze! But I think you can figure out that this one is kind of an I-spy with planes, trains, bikes, cats and more. I like to include a variety of styles that will appeal to any kid when I make a donation.

The back continues the transportation theme with a fun railroad print.

Whew! Well, I'm mostly caught up with sharing my finishes now. I hope you enjoyed the gallery of little quilts. Which one is your favorite?

UFOpalooza Part Two

 

The end of the year seems like a good time to get some more UFOs finished up. Here's my next batch of finishes from the last several weeks.



This is one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. I made two of these spiral blocks each month, for a total of 20. Each pair of spirals includes one that has the featured color on the outside, and one with neutrals on the outside. The combination of these dark and light blocks makes a sort of maze effect.



These blocks were a bit of a pain to make, but in the end I loved how scrappy and fun they turned out. Twenty 10" blocks makes the perfect size little quilt for Wrap A Smile, 40"x50", and it's called Rainbow Spirals.



The backing is a single piece of this fun tan with tiny dogs wearing berets and bandanas. So cute! The binding is scrappy reds to pick up the red in the backing. Any color binding would coordinate with the front!



The quilting is simple wiggly lines that follow the shape of the spirals. Friends, this was the fastest, easiest and most satisfying quilting I've ever done! The piecing completely guided my stitching, so it was practically mindless. The wiggliness of the lines was super forgiving, and look at that texture! I'll be watching for other piecing designs that lend themselves to this technique because it was fun fun fun!



Color Wheels is also destined for Wrap A Smile. In spite of its rainbow colors, it was not made as part of RSC. It was a squirrelly diversion at some point months ago, when my kaleidoscope ruler happened to be sitting on top of some colorful scraps. At first I thought to make beach balls, but once the ROYGBIV was in motion, I couldn't stop the rainbow train. The background is white with tiny blue and green stars, a lovely fabric that was given to me by my husband's aunt.



The flimsy sat around on a hanger until this wonderful backing fabric fell into my lap. Happy little forest critters on bright yellow! It came in my big box of fabrics from Ann last month, and I knew I wanted to use it immediately.

A big, loose stipple quilting motif makes Color Wheels soft and cuddly, and the dark green binding frames it up nicely. Again, because any color would match the front, I chose the binding to coordinate with the backing.



Next up are three really little quilts. Doll-sized little. In fact, they are doll quilts, and will be donated to A Doll Like Me. The first one, Minnows, is made with scraps from a baby quilt I made for my cousin. I saved all the little flippy corner triangles in a fit of frugality. Then I had 160 tiny HSTs that needed to be trimmed to 1 7/8", finishing at 1 3/8". That sound you hear is my head hitting the cutting mat as I pass out from pondering too many tiny HSTs.



I know other quilters love to work with tiny pieces, and I admit the HSTs were darned cute, but it was many hours of labor to produce 12 small "ocean wave" blocks. I was happy to find a few scraps of the original fish themed fabrics to make the central blocks and fatten the whole thing up to about 24" square. Doll quilts are fun to make, but I don't need to spend that many hours of my life on flippy cut offs again.



Jason's Stars, on the other hand, took zero hours of my time to make the blocks. That's because they were made by Erin and I inherited them as a quilty orphan. They were originally intended for her son Jason. As I was scrounging for small pieces of batting to make Minnows, I found just enough of two different materials. Minnows' batting is polyester, and Jason's Stars uses scraps of wool.



Erin did a wonderful job making the stars, pressing the seams so they nested perfectly when I stitched the nine of them together. Her blocks were exactly the same size as each other, too. The nine wonky stars are significant: the colors represent the different karate belt colors on the way to black belt. That's why there's a white star, even though the contrast is low on that one.



This chunk of alphabet fabric, fattened up with some other scraps from Erin, makes a fun backing. The quilting is just walking foot cross hatching through the diagonals of the piecing. A zippy black and white striped binding finished it up.

Last but not least, this little owl quilt is finished. Actually, I finished it months ago and forgot to blog about it. So it's not really a UFO, but I'm guessing you are OK with me throwing it into this post. Owl Be Seeing You was made with all the owl fabrics that were part of the I-Spy square swap I participated in this summer.

I decided not to use owls in my quilts for Wrap A Smile or Quilts Beyond Borders. Some cultures associate owls with death, and since most of the quilts for those organizations go to other countries, I thought I'd save the owls for a US-based donation. 

And now I have three little quilts to share an envelope heading to their forever homes. A Doll Like Me creates soft, personalized dolls that look like the children who receive them. They are specially created for children who might have limb differences, or chemotherapy IV ports, or cochlear implants, or a number of other characteristics not found on typical dolls. It's wonderful for a child to love a doll that looks like him/herself! And very special dolls deserve their own quilt.

A rare glimpse of a quilt in the wild

You guys!! Bernie of Needle and Foot just sent me this link to a short video on her Facebook page. It shows a little girl unwrapping her new Doll Like Me baby, and one of my quilts was in the box, too. So exciting to see it in the hands of such a happy, bubbly kid! Can you see me doing my happy dance?

A Doll Like Me creates dolls that look like a child who has features not usually found on standard dolls. Those features might be limb differences, birthmarks, albinism, or scars. Amy, who sews the dolls, also makes sure that the doll's hair and skin color are the same as the child's. The bodies are soft, cuddly fabric and are the same size as American Girl dolls, making it easy to find clothes and accessories. And the doll faces are so, so sweet. Who wouldn't love a doll like that?

Quite a number of quilters are sewing little quilts for Amy's charity, so I feel super lucky that one of mine was captured on video. If you're not on Facebook, you can still kinda sorta see most of the video by clicking "No thanks" when Facebook tries to cover it up. I don't have my own account, so I watched it on DH's account. Then I begged him to share it on FB because I'm so excited! He'll probably be swamped with quilt and doll stuff now, ha ha!

Sweet DREAMIs!

DREAMI, if you don't know, stands for DRop Everything And Make It! Also known as a quilting squirrel, it's a project that you just can't resist and have to make RIGHT NOW.

This week I learned about another neat charity, called A Doll Like Me. Amy sews soft, sweet dolls that share a physical disability with their young owner. It might be a scar, a birthmark, or a missing limb. It might be a bald doll for a tiny chemo patient. As a pediatric nurse, Amy sees how powerful and healing it is for children to love dolls that look like themselves. 

Bernie at Needle and Foot put out a call for quilters to make some tiny quilts to go with these amazing dolls, and I just couldn't resist stitching up these three. I had some left over blocks from one of my first Project Linus quilts. I thought the bright, happy jungle animals might bring a smile.

At around 20"x24" each, these little pieces stitched up super fast and I was able to make them all in a single day. I quilted them with a quick stipple and bound them all in the same blue stripe. 

I have a niece who had open heart surgery as a baby. When she was a little girl, she struggled with the large scar on her upper chest, always worrying that she looked "different." These quilts were made in her honor.

Making them was definitely a SQUIRREL! moment, so I'm calling them Kit 1, Kit 2, and Kit 3, since baby squirrels are called kits. I tested Kit 2 on Big Daddy, who rides on my husband's scooter. A perfect fit!

My scooter has a bear, too, named Eddy Jr. He's has been out in the rain for a while, his fur is starting to shed, and he's got a thin layer of road grime on him. He doesn't mind, but I didn't want to muss up the quilt. Big Daddy and the scooter he rides are both brand new and very clean, because they replace a bike and bear that were stolen from us mere weeks ago. That is a sad and sordid tale that I'll leave for another time, but you might notice the big cable lock around both front tires. We are sadder, wiser and more paranoid now.

Linking up with Sandra's February DREAMI linky!