Today marks the beginning of a big batch of quilt finishes I'll be sharing on the blog. I actually completed many of these quilts weeks ago, but had to wait until now to get them washed and photographed. To maintain as much social distancing as possible, we've been anchoring more than usual which means conserving our water. But this week we needed a marina for other reasons, so I have unlimited water and have been washing quilts like a crazy woman!
I thought this dock would be a great place to hang the quilts from the boat railing for photos, but it turns out that the dock is on the north size of the boat so the lighting is lousy for that. Rats! In the top pic you can see Sean stepping off the boat into deep shade, carrying each quilt to me one at a time. So helpful!
To get the quilts into the sunshine, I strapped our expandable boat pole between two pilings and hung the quilts from that. It worked fine, although the quilts hung precariously over this murky water!
The pole wasn't quite high enough to hang things vertically, so most of the pics will show sideways quilts. Sorry about that! With so many to photograph, I couldn't ask Sean to hold his arms over his head for an hour. So for this performance, the role of Helpful Husband will be played by his understudy, Beaux T. Pole.
Without further ado, let's see the first finished quilt!
This Rainbow Irish Chain is made from nine patches I've been sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. They've been accumulating for several years and their day has finally arrived.
Back in August, you may remember that there was a huge explosion in Beirut. Along with a devastating loss of life, many buildings and shipping containers were destroyed in the port. Among them was a one that held thousands of quilts to be distributed by the Lutheran World Relief (LWR.)
Joy of The Joyful Quilter put out a call to sew quilts to replace those lost, and she would coordinate collecting them and getting them into the right hands with LWR. At first I said I would donate a top and backing, but decided to go ahead and finish the quilt myself. The required size, 60"x80" pretty large to wrangle in my small space, so I don't usually make them that big.
Since I already had all the rainbow-hued nine patches, it was a simple matter to cut 6.5" scrappy neutral/low volume background squares and piece it all together. For some of the backgrounds, I used the reverse side to keep the colors light so the chains would pop.
I also had a big chunk of this lime green floral for the backing. It only needed a little extra blue tie-dye to make it big enough. A green and cream plaid binding kept the edges looking light and airy.
For a quilt this big, I wanted to get the quilting done quickly with minimal pushing and shoving through the machine. Simple stippling to the rescue.
This quilt has been shipped to Joy so she can add it to her growing pile for LWR. Many, many thanks to Joy for honcho-ing this important effort!
