Jetsetting T for Terry

Happy Thanksgiving! Here on this special Thursday, when we eat turkey and give thanks, a quilt covered with T's seems particularly festive. This one was made in honor of Terry Fullam, the founder of Wrap-A-Smile. It is the second one of this design that I've made.

The national coordinator of Wrap-A-Smile is my friend Ann D. She gave me this fun backing fabric and the greens are a perfect match to the front. Ann made the difficult decision to put the charity on "pause" for the remainder of the pandemic shut downs. The Rotary International surgery teams that Wrap-A-Smile supports are not traveling right now, and Ann has accumulated a good size backlog of quilts. 

As part of the pause, Ann is moving out of Maine and any additional quilts are to be shipped to a person in California. I had easy access to a post office last week, so I shipped out quilts to several different charities. I carefully packed this one up and sent it on its way. However, I managed to cut and paste the address incorrectly into my shipping software. So the T for Terry quilt traveled from Virginia to California and back to my "return address" in Florida. Remember that old song? "Return to sender, address unknown!"

Fortunately, this is exactly why I use my Florida mail service address. They received the returned package and will ship it right back out to the correct address on Monday. All I have to do is pay for the second round of postage. 

This will be my last WAS quilt for a while, but I look forward to the day that the medical teams can travel safely and continue their good work out in the world. Our little quilts will be right beside them, giving warmth and comfort!

Two for Wrap A Smile

As many of you know, one of the charities that I love to support is Wrap A Smile. They provide comfort quilts to several Rotary International sponsored surgery missions, where medical teams travel around the world repairing cleft palates and other disfiguring conditions. Wrap a Smile was the brainchild of Terry (Hodskins) Fullam, who passed away this summer.

To honor Terry's memory, quilters have been making scores of quilts with the letter "T" in the designs. My red, yellow and black quilt was the 100th T quilt! And to make it extra special, I was able to present it in person to Terry's successor, Ann. 

Ann and her husband Steve live in Maine, and the timing was perfect for Sean and me to meet them face to face for the first time last month. Well, it was mostly "mask to mask," but we did take the masks off to share a socially-distanced outdoor picnic dinner in a local park and snap a few commemorative photos. It was a delightful evening with new friends, with lots of great stories and laughter.

I also had this little quilt in a simple patchwork squares design ready for Wrap a Smile, so I hand delivered this one, too.

The yellow border fabric is sparkly, and the precut 6.5" squares feature flowers and butterflies.

I try to make the backings fun on the quilts I make for children, using bigger chunks of large scale prints in colors that coordinate with the front. The center lavender piece has tiny hummingbirds on it; so cute! The red, yellow and black backing on the T quilt features cafe tables and chairs, the Eiffel tower, and little dogs wearing berets. Novelty fabrics just make me happy!

 We're hoping to visit Ann and Steve again as we work our way back south along the Maine coast. Sadly, all the Rotaplast surgery missions are on hold because the pandemic, so the need for more quilts is "on pause." I won't have more quilts to hand off to Ann, but I know our shared love of travel and quilting will give us many hours of great conversation. 

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?

Wrap A Smile

Happy Tuesday! Today I'm sharing two recent finishes I made for Wrap A Smile. This charity provides quilts for children undergoing cleft palate repair surgery. I shared this first quilt as a flimsy last month, when the RSC color was bright green.

My own theme for January was food, so this quilt uses some green fabrics with fruits and veggies. I had this backing already pieced for another project last year, so steered the top towards pinks and reds, too, to coordinate. 

For the quilting, I tried a motif that I saw on Cathy's blog, "squiggles and loops."

I didn't get a good photo of my quilting, so go check out hers!

The second quilt was made here in February. The RSC color is orange, and my own theme is cats. 

I pulled all the fun kitty fabrics I could find that had at least a little orange in them.

Then I cut squares of various bright orange blenders and made a simple patchwork design. 

The backing uses a large piece of orange, leftover bits from the front, and this super fun kitties-on-black chunk. Wiggly lines of quilting across the seams and scrappy orange binding finish it up.

And speaking of scrappy binding, I had an AHA! organizing moment recently. I usually cut my binding to 2.25" and then put the leftovers in my string bins by color. That's all well and good, but I also deliberately cut scraps to 2.5" for the string bin, and they are hard to tell apart. Then it occurred to me that I could put all the 2.25" binding pieces together in a single bin and they would always be right there, ready to sew together into scrappy binding. No need to separate by color, since there aren't so many to sort through. It's working really well: I've already made three bindings from the bin! Hooray for using scraps efficiently!

Grateful

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I am grateful for the photographer who captured some of my quilts hard at work in Guatemala. What a special treat to see them comforting patients before and after surgery!

As you know, one of the charities that I donate to is Wrap-A-Smile, which provides quilts to Rotary-sponsored medical missions. The quilts are used on the operating table during surgery to keep the patients warm. The quilt wraps them up afterwards, too, and goes home with them. Most of the people receiving the free surgery are children, so I focus on making bright, happy quilts for them. In September 2019, Rotaplast had a mission in Guatemala City. And at least three of my quilts were there!



The two little I-spy quilts in the photo at the top of this post were made in fall of 2018. They traveled together to Guatemala. The blue one on was backed with a big dinosaur print that was given to me by Sean's aunt Graciella. If you click through to this photo, you can see those distinctive dinos folded up behind the doctor's back as he listens to the little boy's heart.



The pink quilt also has a unique backing: hot pink/magenta with bright jungle animals.



Recognize it? I sure did! This was the first photo I saw with one of my pieces and I admit there was shouting, and clapping, and even some happy tears. This patient looks to be a bit older than most and is probably a bit more worried, pre-surgery. I hope the procedure was successful and the recovery speedy!



As you can see, documenting the backs of the quilts here on Ye Olde Quilt Blogge can be vital to identifying them later. So I got really lucky on this next piece. The top was finished last fall, like the others, but I never took any photos of the finished quilt with its backing and binding.



It was made of crumb blocks alternating with these cute animal panels and sashed with a tiny black and white polka dot. Each animal is surrounded by an oval "frame."



And here it is, folded up under the shoulders of this child, post surgery. What a wonderful destiny for a funny little quilt! I hope it continues to bring you comfort, small person!

If you're interested in learning more about Rotaplast, you can read about their
current mission on their blog. Each mission is a little different, but the essence is the same. The quilts are a small part of a very organized process of bringing high quality surgical care to under-served populations.

I leave you with this photo from Guatemala, which is not of my quilt. But I love the smile on this cute girl! It captures what I hope for each of my donation quilts, that they will make a child happy. I'm so lucky to have the time and resources to spend hours doing a hobby that I love. And I'm grateful to the huge network of volunteers who bring these vital medical missions to distant countries. It feels good to be a small part of this important work!

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.