Robin the Panda

Hello, quilty friends! It's been a while, hasn't it? I took a little vacation from blogging, but not from sewing, so I have some finishes to share with you. This piece is Robin the Panda. 

Robin is named after the way he was created, as a round-robin group effort. Five members of the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild, including me, added something to Robin's little world. 

I made the center block and then shipped it across the country to another person. She added the forest at Robin's feet. Then the bamboo stalks and appliqued leaves to each side were made by another person. 

Then a black and white striped border was added. Then the darling bear paw print blocks were added. A purple outer border framed it all up.

After the fifth round, it was returned to me for quilting and binding. Some of the purple fabric was sent to me by the final participant, and I used it as part of the pieced backing.

Robin the Panda was donated to Quilts Beyond Borders, one of the charities that Sunshine supports. I hope he makes a child happy! It was super fun to be part of a round robin. Have you ever sent blocks or a partially finished quilt to someone else for something like this?

Many Mendotas

Today I have a big batch of small finishes to share. My online quilt guild, Sunshine, stitched up tons of simple blocks over the last year or so. Finishing at 10"x10", the block is an offset bordered square with a 5" center.

The blocks were sewn into tops at a retreat in Mendota, MN back in June. Since I sadly couldn't attend the retreat, I put together my own blocks at home, and also committed to quilting and binding five of the retreat tops.



Each of these quilts will be donated to one of Sunshine's two sponsored charities: Wrap A Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders.



The "Mendota" block is so simple and versatile that I am still cutting pieces to make more! It's a great way to use novelty fabrics, either as the framed center or as the surrounding borders.



These little quilts, either 40" x 50" or 40" x 60", piece and quilt up really quickly. The 40" dimension makes it easy to use width of fabric chunks for the backings. I try to always document the backings, because sometimes that is all that shows in photos we receive from the charities. It's always a thrill for someone in Sunshine to spot a quilt they made, wrapped around a tiny child!

This blue/green one and the black/white/gray one above were made completely by me.

I love this camping fabric! See the woodpecker on the picnic table?

This backing features bugs on teal and silver metallic stars on blue.

This one and the ones that follow below were made at the Mendota retreat and sent to me to finish. I love all the bright birds and butterflies! I quilted this one in casual back-and-forth squiggles in each block.

The backing was also provided to me, and features abstract pink cat heads and blue/pink zigzags.

Happy amphibians! I guess the birds in the next block can't see that there's a froggy snack just above them.

It was dark and gloomy the day I finished this one. But the fabrics are mostly happy sea critters. I like the clean blue and white color scheme.

So I added my own jaunty nautical backing on it after quilting in a soft, loose stipple. The binding is tiny red, white and blue anchors. 

 

Penguins count as sea critters, right? 

It passed inspection by Angel, who says both fish and penguins are delicious.

This one is a bit more random, and it was fun to peer at other people's fabrics as I quilted it up. The backing features more of the pink cat heads plus a pretty blue and pink floral. Alas, that photo didn't turn out at all. I've been really struggling with getting pictures lately.

 

This is the only photo that is even a little scenic, if you consider a glimpse of the Illinois River past our dinghy scenic. 

Here's a more comprehensive shot of the cute Mendota retreat quilt. Even though it is red and green, it isn't Christmas-y at all. Lots of really fun novelties peeking out: jelly beans and soccer balls, farms and foxes.

I put a big chunk of yellow plaid on the back to play down the red/green, and found a cute stripe in red/blue/green/yellow for the binding. The little fairies on red were a gift from Rose of Something Rose Made fame. The quilting is alternating straight and curved lines done with the walking foot. Nice to do something other than stippling every once in a while!

This final quilt was also made at the retreat, but features elephant blocks in myriad colors. Aren't they cute? The dark blue plaid is a flannel, so this one is super soft.

I backed them with seagulls and lighthouses. Perhaps the elephants were on a seaside holiday? I can't remember, but the elephants will never forget.

Free fabric and a finish

Look at all this super cute ocean themed fabric! My friend Karen, who blogs over at KaHolly, sent all these pieces to me last week. Wasn't that sweet? She thought I would get around to stitching them up into a quilt long before she would, since it's been marinating in her stash for about five years. I couldn't resist working with them right away.

It's a series of 12 squarish panels that can be sewn into a soft book or a toddler quilt, plus some nice coordinating scraps in bright colors. I used the scraps for cornerstones, added some mottled yellow sashing and pieced this up into a simple 3x4 layout top. The bold, happy fish designs do the heavy lifting to make this fun, so I think simple piecing was all it needed. 

Fabric panels are notoriously uneven in size, and these were as much as 3/8" different in height and width from each other. However, there is a curvy, squiggly darker blue printed on the edges of the blocks, making an easy transition to the yellow sashing, no matter what the overall size. The top is about 36"x46", a good toddler quilt size. I'm going to donate this one to Little Lambs, which is one of the charities for Hands2Help this year. Sarah announced the challenge today; go take a look if you're interested. The quilts aren't due to be shipped until June, so I have plenty of time to quilt up these fishies. Thanks so much, Karen, for sending this packet of fun!

Meanwhile, I completely finished this quilt, called Olympic I-Spy. The Sunshine Online Quilt Guild had a little challenge during the winter Olympics games to stitch something up in the colors of the Olympic flag: red, blue, yellow, green and black. 

I used those colors to border little I-spy blocks in contrasting colors. It was fun and fast and the colors are bright and cheerful.

I sandwiched the top up with this happy red and white heart fabric and Warm and Natural batting. It's fairly thin, so the whole quilt is sort of a lightweight summer piece. The binding is a bright stripe in all the Olympic colors plus orange, but it works fine. 

I did big, soft floppy feather quilting to keep it snuggly. This motif is fast, fun and forgiving of a bit of lumpiness and asymmetry. Being personally both lumpy and asymmetric, this works well for me. My feathers are getting better in the middle of the quilt, but edges are still a challenge. I also managed to catch a big fold in the backing all along one edge, so a bit of frog stitching needed to happen (rip-it! rip-it!) Quilting will keep you humble, folks.

Here is the quilt being inspected by Number 17. It passed with flying (Olympic) colors, and then took a spin through the washer to get rid of cat hairs and other impurities. The cursing I did during the stitch ripping washes out, right?

Olympic I-Spy has already been shipped off to one of the coordinators for the Wrap A Smile quilt charity. You can read more about WAS here if you're interested. I didn't think I'd have time to mail any more quilts while we were still in the US, but we've been sitting in Key West for over a week waiting for a good weather window. Please note that this is NOT a complaint!

We use maps like this to help us decide when to leave on longer passages. The trip to the closest Bahamian island, Bimini, from here will take us about 24 hours. So we're looking for the map to be white and the lightest blue along our route during that time. That medium blue means the waves could be as high as 6 feet, which can be uncomfortable (but not dangerous.) Given the choice of enjoying another few days in Key West vs. getting bounced around on passage, we'll most likely keep waiting for smoother seas. Like quilting, boating is supposed to be fun!