Baby gifts

I gave two quilts recently as baby gifts. The penguin blocks were stitched by another blogger who gave them away as orphan blocks. I added the scrappy background, quilted it up, and sent it to the lovely young woman who manages some property for us.

I blogged about this several months ago when I finished it, and wanted to have a record of who I gave it to.

This beach-themed quilt was made from a panel that I cut up and put back together, adding a nice stripe for some extra width. 

It's a counting game: one sun, two sand castles, three fish. So bright and fun!

I gave this to my friends B and K, for their second baby, A. Their first child is a toddler now and I thought she would enjoy pointing out the numbers and colors to her baby brother.

And here's A, enjoying his new quilt. Isn't he a cutie? I just love getting photos of my quilts in action!

Wheelchair lap quilts

 

Today I'm sharing two wheelchair quilts I made for the Joyful Stitchers in Alabama. I shipped these to my friend Doris, who delivered them to the group to distribute to folks in nursing homes. These are quite small, only 36"x48", in order to fit on a lap without getting caught in any wheels.

I thought it would be nice to make a couple of masculine ones. The first one features hunting themed panel blocks. The fabric has horses, foxes and hounds, and reminds me of my late step-father, Bob. Bob was a member of the Los Altos Hunt Club, which sounds very stuffy and la-di-da, doesn't it? Bob was a very down-to-earth guy though, and loved both horses and dogs.

I had a few different red, green and black plaids that I used both on the back and as accent fabrics in some simple blocks. It's a teensy bit Christmassy, but I think that's OK, don't you?

The second quilt features smaller panels that are also outdoors/hunting themed. Instead of the classic fox hunt though, the images are more rustic: a cabin in the woods, deer, bears, etc. There's a fisherman on the stream and even a moose or two. Meese?

I added a row of bear paw blocks just to feel like I actually did something other than sew squares together. Nothing wrong with squares, though!

The back of this quilt uses this ducks-in-the-marsh fabric. I hope both pieces bring a bit of warmth and perhaps some fond memories of being out in the wilderness to a couple of gentlemen.

Soft and snuggly for Covered in Love

Welcome to Finish it up Friday! Oh, wait. It's Tuesday. Anybody else having trouble keeping track of the days?? Oh well, I have two finishes to share no matter what day it might be. Both of these were shipped off today to Covered in Love, and were made with blocks, panels, yardage, and a kit that were donated to the charity.

This first one was made from an unusual kit. I'm guessing it is from the early part of the millenium. All the fabric was pre-cut into one of the following sizes: 3"x3", 3"x6", 3"x9" or 3"x12". The top layer of fabric in the package was blue and yellow, so I started this in April, the month when the RSC color was yellow. But as I dug into the piles, every pastel color emerged, with a smattering of darker shades, all in pretty florals.

It was early in the pandemic lockdown and I was finding it really hard to concentrate. So I decided that all I could handle was the simplest of patchwork, just squares, and cut all the pieces down to 3"x3". I stitched them so the few darker blocks formed larger dark squares and that was the extent of my "design." A few of the darker squares are pretty subtle, but that's OK. 

The top sat for another few months before I got around to making a backing and quilting it. By then I had the mental bandwidth to do some quilting that was a bit more interesting than my usual stipple. This loopy design that goes from corner to corner of the dark-centered blocks is still quite easy, but gives some nice secondary patterns.

The back uses up some of the last of this dusty green that was given to me by my DH's aunt in 2017. I think the original piece was 12 yards; that's a boat load of fabric!

The second finish for today's post features these gentle geishas, cut from a donated panel. I really like the striking black against cream contrast of the three ladies.

The coin strips were also donated, and arrived in my mail all sewn together in 3.5" widths. They were so fun and easy to add into this quilt that I've started sewing my own little scraps into long strips like this. They make super leader/enders. The background fabric, a sage green and purple batik, was donated by Jan. I think it looks a little like long skinny bamboo leaves, or tall sea grass.

And finally, the backing was also donated. This pretty piece of red and brown minky was sent to me by my friend Steph. It is soooo soft and fuzzy! You can easily see the way I quilted the piece with simple, wiggly lines in this photo. Minky is a bit tricky, stretchy in one direction but not the other. The batik background on the front of the quilt is just the opposite: hardly stretchy at all in any direction. This quilting motif has a lot of springiness and give, so it's pretty forgiving for combining the two into a finished quilt.

I often try to piece the charity label into the backing, but piecing minky is a PITA (pain in the ankle.) Trimming the label with pinking shears and using raw-edge applique works fine, too, with a nice raggedy effect after washing. These two quilts are now ready to do the good work of comforting end-of-life patients at hospitals in Texas.

Wheelchair quilts with feet

Happy Thursday! Today's finishes are two wheelchair quilts that I sent off to the Joyful Stitchers in Alabama. They distribute quilts to nursing homes in their area. The quilts are quite small, only about 36"x48". This size keeps the fabric from getting caught in the wheels while still providing some warmth and color.

The first one was made in January, when the RSC color was green and my own theme-o-the-month was food. I think this panel was meant to be placemats? I fattened up the panels with a scrappy green and cream checkerboard, reminiscent of tablecloths in a casual restaurant. 

The fun panels are all Italian food, an all-time favorite here on the boat. DH's family is Italian and both his Dad and uncle are fantastic cooks. The back is also food themed: cafe tables with wine bottles, and fun teapots. I wouldn't use wine fabric on a kid's quilt, so this is a great way to use up that chunk.

And speaking of DH, here are his feet! You can tell we've gotten back into warm, southerly waters because the weather is perfect for shorts and bare feet.

The second quilt is my own design and made from a jelly roll of batiks. I pieced it many months ago and finally got it finished. One more off the UFO pile, hooray!

It's one of those stitch-and-flip kind of layouts, where you sew together all the strips and then cut sections off the ends. Those sections are flipped over and sewn back in the middle for a bit of contrast. For the quilting, I just did wiggly lines across all the seams. EZPZ.

The back used up the last of this fun VW bus fabric, plus a newspaper collage with upbeat article snippets. I hope it will bring back memories of the 60s for someone. Of course, they say if you can remember the 60s, you weren't really enjoying them fully!



You can tell this piece is slightly longer than the last one, because there are feet but no shorts. Rest assured the shorts are actually there...he was not nekkid in this pic! Is that reassuring, or disappointing?

Four for Covered in Love

Happy Boxing Day, quilty friends! We're having gorgeous weather along the Florida panhandle. That has allowed me to finally, FINALLY take some photos to share with you. I've had a stack of finished quilts waiting for their glamour shots before I could mail them off to Kat for Covered in Love.

This first one is made entirely of other people's orphan blocks. The colors in the scraps are really bright and saturated! Like wiggly kindergartners, they needed just a little bit of help to calm down and play nicely together, so I sashed them with a tonal brick red and gray cornerstones. I also trimmed them all to a consistent size so they could be sewn in this even grid. The overall effect is interesting and cheerful without being chaotic, I think. 

Kat sent me quite a bit of donated fabric in larger chunks, great for piecing into backings. I used all the jungle animals here, plus a few extra orphan blocks. The binding was premade by a CiL contributor, too, a nice time saver for me.

This next one came to me as finished flying geese, already sewn together into loooooooooooooooong strips. Included was a note from Gail H. who had sent it to Kat: "These pieces were given to me by LaVonne Bevens in 2000. Someone had given them to her, she said." So those geese flew from "someone" to LaVonne to Gail to Kat to me. I'm at least the fifth quilter to handle them, so it was definitely time to let these geese fly home! The note also included some photos of possible layout ideas, and this one struck my fancy. The mustard yellow fabric was also a donation. I quilted wishbones all along that yellow, using yellow thread, so it's completely invisible. Good thing I find wishbones to be rather pleasant and meditative because I doubt anyone else will even notice them.

The backing is pieced from fat quarters that were part of the same fabric line as the mustard. They are reproduction prints with Americana motifs, and super nice quality cotton. This quilt is so soft!

This one is my favorite of the bunch. Look at that sweet birdie panel! SO cute! Kat sent this to me, and I'm not sure if it was donated to her or from her personal stash (edited to add: Kat says it was donated.) I know the jelly roll strips that I used to make the 16 patches and binding were her own fabric. They were lying next to the panel in my studio and I had one of those "Aha!" moments. They look made for each other, don't they?

I love the modern, stylized design of these birds and the pretty autumn colors. The deep, rich, chocolate brown borders were also part of the Americana fabric line donation. Aaaaaaand now I want some dark chocolate.

The backing is pieced from a combination of my own yardage and donated pieces. The birdhouses at the top are a chunk I've had for ages that never went with any of my other fabrics, but it works thematically and chromatically here. Every fabric has a destiny!

This quilt was made using the free pattern called "Preppy" by A Bright Corner.

All the darker pieces of the argyle came from a donated fat quarter bundle, and I added the black polka dot sashing and cream background. I've loved argyle since I was in high school, so it was really fun to stitch up! I think my Mom will approve of this one, too. I wish I had taken more close up photos of the fabrics; they have really pretty metallic accents. Maybe Kat will do that when the quilt arrives in Texas.

The back is a big chunk of a funky donated mod olive green print, with the leftover squares from the argyles. I left this photo uncropped so we can all enjoy the shadow of my hand on the camera. Apparently I hold my fingers out JUST SO to take pictures, because every single one of these photos have that same shadow!

Three quilts got boxed up today (how appropriate!) and are winging their way to Kat. I would have sent more, but to paraphrase Donald Rumsfield, you to go the post office with the boxes you have. And there are more quilts that finally were photographed today that are ready to feature in my Giving Orphans a Home series, so stay tuned!

Giving Orphans a Home: (Almost) Enough Blocks

Welcome to part two of Giving Orphans a Home. Today I'm going to share a few techniques for dealing with a big batch of orphan blocks that are almost, but not quite, enough for a full quilt.



This is Grandpa's Plaid Shirts. When I saw all the blocks for this quilt together in a big ziplock baggie, I knew it was one of the first ones I would tackle. I just love all the soft plaids, flannels and homespuns! These nine blocks are each a nine patch of sub-blocks, and came to me in a combination of completed big blocks and a pile of sub-blocks.



Here's one of the blocks that came to me completed: nine four patches set on point. If you look at the finished quilt, you can see there were also finished big blocks made up of all flying geese, all rail fence, and all whatever that block is in the far right of the middle row. (Anybody know the name of that one?)

Also in the baggie were a bunch of sub-blocks, but fewer than nine of each: windmills, pinwheels, broken dishes, four patches, nine patches, and more. I think the intent was for there to be 12 big blocks, each made of a single style sub-block, and someone gave up two-thirds of the way there.



What to do? One option was to try to make more of each sub-block type until I had nine each of 12 types. But I have almost no plaids in my stash and wanted to get this quilt finished quickly. I decided the plaids were busy enough that no one would really notice if a big block was made of, say, four windmills and five broken dishes. So I started combining all the little pieces together, figuring as long as some symmetry was maintained, it would be JUST FINE. And you know what? It IS! It isn't as quite as big, but at 60"x60" is a good size for Covered in Love. And it's a finished quilt, ready to comfort a family rather than muttering and mumbling pieces in a ziplock baggie.

The cream sashing, which was a yardage donation to Covered in Love, plus some pale blue cornerstones, corrals each block into just enough scrappy plaid goodness, allowing me to use every single sub-block. I was short just one. A gold star if you can find the chunky churn dash in "close enough" fabrics! Edited to add: Since I wrote this post, I've learned that the plaid shirt blocks were made by Holly. Big thanks to Holly for making such fun pieces and donating them to Covered in Love!

And because this is the first time the quilt has been documented on my blog, here are a few more details. I quilted it with a simple loose stipple and bound it in the same light blue plaid as the cornerstones. 

The back is a combination of a pretty blue swirly paisley that was donated to Covered in Love, and a panel chock full of fish. I thought that might appeal to the kind of guy who wore plaid shirts. The fish fabric was given to me by Cynthia of Quilting is More Fun than Housework.

Next up is Snowballs and Chicken Panels. Those are my DH's chicken feet underneath. This one is an example of how to use a panel or two (or four!) to fatten up a group of blocks that aren't enough for an entire quilt.

Approximately 120 finished snowball blocks were donated to CiL. Each one was either a dark center with light corners, or a light center with dark corners. They were beautifully made, very evenly sized and all the corners were properly pressed to the dark fabric. I knew stitching them together would go so smoothly! In addition, a big batch of centers and precut corner triangles were donated. For a brief moment, I considered finishing up the rest of the snowballs. Then I sat down and had a cool beverage until that thought went away. I KNEW my snowballs wouldn't be as precise and it just sounded....tedious. Surely 120 was enough for an entire quilt? That's so many blocks! But at 4.5" finished block size, it wasn't going to be enough for a CiL quilt.



Chickens to the rescue! This panel is called Three French Hens, and it has the same sort of old-fashioned, farm house vibe of the scrappy snowball fabrics. By using a combination of trimming the panels and adding skinny borders in light blue, I made them equal to five snowballs in width, and three in height. This allowed me to use all the premade snowballs plus only a handful more of my own.

And as I predicted, those snowballs were super easy to sew into rows and columns. I do love the way the center section looks with the alternating dark and light blocks, and maybe someday I'll make an entire quilt of this style. But for today, they are playing with chickens and hopefully bringing a little comfort.

The back and binding on this one used up the last of the blue plaid from Grandpa's Plaid Shirts. Once I start cutting up yardage, I'm often motivated to just use it up completely. Does that happen to you? 

So the plaid blocks became a complete quilt by combining them differently and reducing the size from the original design. And the snowballs got plumped up with some fun panels. Another option that always works is to add simple borders. If there had been a few more snowballs, I might have just added a few rounds of coordinating blenders as inner borders and a nice floral outer border. 

Adding top and bottom rows of different blocks can also stretch a set of "not quite enough" blocks. For a great example of this, check out Cathy's bright, happy flimsy here.

Have you used any of these techniques to stretch some orphan blocks? Let me know in the comments!

The next installment of Giving Orphans a Home will explore some medallion style options. And if you missed it, here's the introduction of this series.

Wrapping Smiles

Today's finishes are three little quilts for Wrap-A-Smile, which provides quilts to children undergoing Rotary-sponsored surgery. 

The first is made in a very conventional way. I used a pattern called Five Yards, which calls for (oddly enough) one yard each of five fabrics.There are two blocks that alternate and a border that I didn't add to keep the size small. I chose three transportation-themed fabrics, a solid-reading orange and a mottled yellow-green.

I put most of the leftover yardage on the back in nice, straight horizontal strips. Really. Those strips are straight! The fabrics are very cute, and the second strip down is the Vehicles for Sale section of a newspaper, so that's what I named the quilt. The quilting is simple wavy lines in bright orange thread, and orange binding finishes it up.

School Days is made with a panel plus 10 nine patches set on point. The panel features schools, a library, school buses, playgrounds and lots of kids, all surrounded by bright crayons. I had a close match to the green of the panel to set the nine patches.

For the back, I used this big piece of amphibian fabric. Frogs, turtles, salamanders, plus the bugs they eat and the word "Green." Very fun! I did simple stipple quilting on this one, and used the same orange binding as Vehicles for Sale.

Chirp, Flutter, Bloom is the final quilt, and it is made with a cheerful panel plus lotto blocks made by Sunshine Online Guild members. The panel is the center of the quilt, and is printed to look a bit like individual blocks. I added an assortment of pink, green, yellow and aqua blocks plus some striped sashing. The colors are brighter than the photos show.

The backing is this fun flamingo fabric in the same colors, and a minty green binding also has bits of pink and blue in it. Another fast stipple quilted it up and makes it cuddly. 

So there you go, three different quilts using three different piecing strategies. I enjoyed going from the symmetry of regular blocks in Vehicles for Sale to the scrappy chaos of Chirp, Flutter, Bloom with Schools Days being a little of both! I hope they each make a child smile.