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!

Jack's Basket Quilts

Today I have three little quilts to share with you. They were all made specifically for a charity called Jack's Basket, which provides support for families with new Downs Syndrome babies. Every baby deserves to be celebrated! In that spirit of celebration, I decided to make happy little quilts to put in the baskets. Jack's Basket asks that the quilts be approximately 30"x36".

The first quilt is called Joyful Jack, because the fabrics are so upbeat and happy! I made it using six little panel squares that feature smiling animals with encouraging words like "Never forget how much you are loved" and "Have courage, dream big." 

The other blocks are scrappy crumb-y blocks in bright novelty fabrics. 

Joyful is sashed in a pale green and yellow geometric with scrappy cornerstones. I had a mini charm pack that was the right colors so I grabbed 20 of the squares. The parrot block above has a pale yellow background that mushed into the sashing, so I put a thin purple border around it and centered it to make it look deliberate. Big stipple for quilting makes a soft, snuggly quilt. The binding is the same as the sashing, the first time I've tried that. It gives a nice, clean finish, not that you can tell on this busy, happy little quilt.

Jungle Jack is a very simple quilt made from a panel of jungle critters. While none of these animals are smiling, they have cute, whimsical looks on their faces and I find them quite appealing. The colors are earth tones: brown, gray, green, orange and a touch of blue. I found some FQs that coordinated and pieced together piano key borders to bring the size up to 30"x36". I quilted around the panel to frame it, then did a big, loose wavy crosshatch over the animals with my walking foot. In the borders I did FMQ hearts and arches.

No need for a pieced backing with quilts this small. Less than a yard covers the whole back lickety split. On Joyful Jack I used this fun print called Animal Tails, which shows the backsides of circus animals wearing brightly colored formal jackets. For Jungle Jack, I used a brown and orange print with oak leaves and acorns. OK, oaks aren't really jungle plants, but the colors are right. I used the same print as the binding. The bindings on both quilts are machine sewn to be sturdy.

These tiny quilts go together so fast! Because I already had the cut panels and crumb blocks in my Block Orphanage, each one was completed from piecing to quilting in a single day. When I folded them up to put them into a medium flat rate box for shipping, there was room left over. Well heck, I thought, I'll just make a third quilt to fill that box!

This one is Monterey Jack, named after the pieces of cheese in this mouse print. Yes, I know that's Swiss cheese, but c'mon, I had to keep with the "Jack" themed names, right? This design uses four FQs, and I saw it on Nancy's blog. You can buy the pattern from Modern Quilt Studio as part of a booklet of several patterns. However, I have Chronic Math Brain and often fall asleep thinking about numbers. It's a sickness, I know. Knowing that the pattern finished at 30"x36" and that a FQ is typically 18"x21", the dimensions to cut each piece floated gently out of the void and into my head. Yesterday I woke up, picked four fun fabrics, and started cutting. By the end of the day, the third quilt was finished.

The focal fabric that set the color palette is this happy kitty piece. I love their smiling faces and the little bird that perches on the ears and tails! The mouse and cheese fabric coordinated nicely and gives good contrast. A soft purple and a bit of leftover butterfly fabric and we're done. There's a vertical strip of yellow blender between the two sections, and I used that fabric again in the flange of the binding to give a nice frame.

I tried different cutting dimensions on the flanged binding this time. Usually I cut the main fabric 1.5" wide and the flange 1.75". This time I upped the flange to 2" which makes the whole binding a bit wider and the flange is more obvious. I like a wide binding, so I'm happy with this. I wouldn't go much bigger, though, because the fold of the flange would get too floppy, I think.

The backing is a single piece of this medium, muted blue. It picks up the blue in the yarn balls and butterflies on the front, and nicely matches the outside of the binding. I quilted Monterey Jack in floppy feathers, which is becoming a new favorite motif! I love how fast they stitch, and soooo forgiving. No one is more shocked than I am that I like feathers. The front thread is a bright yellow 40 weight and the bobbin is light blue 50 weight. Yellow is such a great neutral for quilting that even though the yellows in the quilt are very soft and muted, bright yellow thread looks great on top.

Today the three pieces took a tumble through the washer and dryer and they are now snuggled together in their shipping box, ready to take a Priority flight to Jack's Baskets in Minnesota.