A Quilt for Sue

This quilt is for Sue. Sue is the full time caregiver for the mother of my friend, Lisa. 

I have never met Sue. Lisa's parents and Sue live in Santa Rosa county, in California. They all needed to evacuate because of the fires last month. 

Before she left smoky, on fire Santa Rosa, Sue went to her second job (yes, she is a full time caregiver AND has a second job) at a retirement/nursing care center. Because of Sue's insistence that every one of the elderly residents there MUST be evacuated in the single, small shuttle van, no one was hurt as the fires swept behind them soon after. The van normally holds 11 or 12 people, but Sue directed folks to sit on each other's laps so that no one was left behind. 

Sue is a hero! And as she worked to save others, Sue's house burned to the ground. I felt she needed to be thanked for her unsung heroism and comforted on the loss of her home. So I made her a quilt.

The fabric is from the Robert Kaufman Imperial collection. It features Asian-inspired florals and geometrics in gorgeous plums and browns and blues with metallic gold accents. Worthy of a hero. 

I pieced it in a simple yet dramatic pattern, sashed vertical rectangles that let the fabrics shine and came together fairly quickly. Because, having nothing else now, Sue needs her quilt soon.

I quilted it free motion, with a different motif in each color: curvy crosshatching, ribbon candy, stipples, figure eights, spirals. All that quilting adds lots of texture and warmth, because I figure Sue could use a little quilty comfort right about now.

The backing is a small pinky plum floral on white, because it's pretty. And the binding is gold metallic with a pink inner flange, because that felt kind of fancy to me. And I think Sue deserves pretty and fancy, don't you?

I'm linking to Sew Some Love, where Kat asks us to show our charity projects. But this quilt didn't feel like charity work to me. It was a deep honor to make it for Sue, who deserves so many thanks. It went into the mail today, to Lisa's parents' home, where Sue is living temporarily. I hope she likes it.

I've named this one Sue's Quilt, because if I were a quilt, I'd be honored to belong to Sue. Wouldn't you?

Little Boy Blue

This small quilt top, measuring 42" x 42", is called Little Boy Blue. The focal fabric is a small panel that I bought in a local quilt shop in...Maine? I think. There were only the four blocks on the panel, then the pattern repeated, so I fattened the quilt up with scrappy 25 patches in creams and pale blues. The sashing is a brighter blue. Another row of scrappy 2.5" squares around the perimeter used up most of those bits and pieces. I'll use the same sashing fabric for the binding, which should tie it all together nicely.

The adventurous boys in the panels are so sweet! I'll take more detailed photos after I quilt this one so you can see their happy little faces.

While sewing one of the longer seams, my bobbin ran out. I changed it quickly and continued to sew. My machine suddenly was much, much smoother and quieter! Hmm, I wonder why? No matter, it sounds great! I sewed another long seam, then moved over to the ironing board. Those two seams were long, curved bows and when I tugged on them gently, the thread snapped. Wha??! It turns out that I hadn't put the bobbin in quite right, so the tension was super high on the bobbin side. I have no idea why that made the machine quieter, but lesson learned. Even what seems like a sudden improvement in sewing should be viewed with suspicion. Rethreading (and two looooong seams to rip) solved the problem.

Linking up with Sew Some Love, since this is a charity quilt for Project Linus.

Boatyard Discombobulation

I was excited this week to connect with Torina who is collecting pillowcases for Camp Heartland, a camp for youth with HIV or AIDS. Each kid leaves with a new set of their own bedding, and they also can use the pillowcases to carry personal belongings. The ages range from 7 to 15 years old.

Psychedelic turtles, autumnal cats & dogs, bones & Boston terriers pillowcases

I made these pillowcases using the "burrito" technique from The Seasoned Homemaker. It was a great way to use some fabrics that have been underfoot, since I'm on a mission to really clean up right now.

A pillowcase burrito getting pinned together

We are currently tied up in a boat yard in a rather industrial part of New Orleans. In fact, it is along the Industrial Canal, infamous for the levee breach here that flooded the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina. The views are rather, um, industrial, but I can see both nice sunrises and sunsets between the cranes and rusty metal work buildings.

Pile o' burritos ready for sewing

We'll be here for at least two months while our boat is being repainted. About a month from now, we'll have to move off the boat altogether when they get to the super dusty and dirty sanding part of the job. We'll be moving into an even smaller space, a friend's 30 foot RV, so I'm organizing my fabric into piles of stuff to take with me and stuff to put completely away into sealed containers.

Sweet little owls, laid out to show full size of pillowcases

I'm often a DReami (DRop Everything And Make It) quilter...I rarely plan out my projects, but get struck by inspiration and plunge into my stash up to my elbows. I want to take it all with me to the RV! But it's smarter to try to plan a few things in advance and only bring the fabric for those projects.

While doing my thinking and sorting, I kept stumbling across my WTF fabrics (that stands for "What's THIS For?") As my style and my stash coalesce, there are pieces that just don't GO, you know? Certain pastels, for instance, that don't work well with my very brightly colored stuff aimed at older kids. And my small remaining stash of fleeces and flannels, now that I've decided not to buy any more of them because of how bulky they are to store. I'm happy that I was able to make pillowcases out of some of this yardage and get it out from underfoot.

Kid friendly, but not my style at all. Baby pink is my least favorite color, and the cats are too "down-home old fashioned" for me

I wanted to make pillowcases that appealed to both boys and girls across the entire range of ages, so not all these are WTF fabrics. The teal horses are actually one of my very favorite pieces that I've been hoarding. I thought they might be just right for an older teen, and paired them with a subtle heart print to keep the pillowcase more sophisticated than, say, the lurid turtles.

Laurel Burch teal horses. I love this fabric. Sigh.

All told, I made eleven pillowcases over the course of two days. This was a great project and I'm sure I'll make more in the future. Since each pillowcase uses three fabrics (main fabric, cuff and accent stripe) I spent a couple of fun hours pulling and matching colors and patterns. I love that part of quilting! There's not a huge amount of ironing, so I was able to use the rest of some cotton/polyester blend fabric that make lousy quilting fabric. (It's the tiny cream heart fabric in the main body of the teal horses above.) I'll keep that in mind next time I accidentally purchase some blends.

Linking up with Sew Some Love for this new to me charity donation opportunity!

Gulf Coast Churn Dash

Earlier this month, I was inspired by the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month to sew up a few purple chunky churn dash blocks. Well, I'm just not suited for these monthly quilt along thingies, because I don't have the discipline to wait for the next clue/color/block/whatever.

I pulled out my green, aqua and blue scraps and made enough chunkies for this quilt top. And without waiting for the right month to use those colors, I sewed this puppy up.

I was originally inspired by Claudia's quilt, which is now finished (isn't it gorgeous?) She's been enjoying traveling along the Alabama coast lately, so I'm naming this one Gulf Coast Churn Dash in her honor. We were anchored in the sloughs near Lake Borgne, LA when I finished joining all the blocks, too.

My top still needs borders, and you might recognize the hourglass blocks from yesterday's tutorial. The chunky churn dashes are 100% from scraps and the hourglasses are from yardage.

Gulf Coast Churn Dash is a charity quilt. It will be given away to someone who needs it, I just don't know yet who that will be. I've been feeling very strongly lately that the world needs more love and kindness, and stitching these blocks with the intent to set them free has helped me. The Hands 2 Help charity challenge is coming up, and perhaps I'll be inspired by Sarah's selection of charities. Or perhaps this one will go to Covered in Love. I'll know when the right destination reveals itself.

Linking up to Sew Some Love.

Sew Some Love Houses

Today I have two brand new things to share: this quilt, and a new link up from Kat & Cat Quilts. The link up is called "Sew Some Love" and is for sharing any project we are sewing for charity. I'm excited to be part of the first link party and to see what other crafty folks are creating to give away.

Over the holidays, my niece Lauren asked me if I would donate a quilt to a fund raiser that her sorority is having in March 2017. All the proceeds will benefit CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children), which provides legal advocacy for abused children near Walla Walla, WA. 

I've been eyeing the Hillside Houses pattern on Pretty Little Quilts and thought it would make a nice donation to a charity called CASA. Using only fabric that I already had in my stash, I pieced this quilt in blues, greens, and browns, with two bright red houses. All the roofs are solid gray, and the colors get lighter toward the top of the hill, as if the sun is rising on a bright, new day.

After Kat announced the new link up, I decided to name this quilt Sew Some Love Houses. Here are a few photos of it draped around our house, which is currently a boat in the swamps of Louisiana.

For the backing, I used a piece of basketball fabric that was *almost* but *not quite* big enough. Not enough basketballs? Fatten it up with butterflies, I always say. The basketball fabric is a really nice quality Robert Kaufman print that has been languishing in my stash for quite a while. Lauren's college is buried under snow right now, and I figured anyplace that wintry is probably full of basketball fans.

Here are a few of my favorite houses/blocks. Red bricks with curvy shingled roof.

Wood grain fabric and wood grain quilting.

Fun sky fabric. Partly cloudy with a chance of basketballs.

Faux Greek key roof pattern.

I made flanged binding out of a medium gray with a red inner stripe. I thought it kind of tied back to the two red houses in the middle. It's also a fancy-looking but very forgiving, all-machine-sewn binding technique.

This quilt wasn't my favorite thing to make, I must admit. I liked each combination of dark and light shade for individual houses, but wasn't thrilled with the overall look. It is so much bigger than most of my quilts (60"x75") that I couldn't step far enough back to see the overall effect, and I've been working on it a lot at night when the lighting was lousy. But things started to turn around when I decided to use the basketballs on the back and then started the quilting. It was slow going, but the addition of all that texture made me happy! And when Kat announced her link up, it reminded me that charity quilting is all about sharing the love.

I'll wash Sew Some Love Houses next week when we have access to more fresh water. The crinkling should be epic on this one after a spin through the washer and dryer. Then it will wing its way to Walla Walla, where hopefully someone will buy it in support of CASA's good works.

I'm also linking up to Free Motion Mavericks this week, since this was my biggest FMQ project to date, and with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? because I'm happy it's finished!

More triangles and incoming stash

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I made a few more of the Y-seam pieced triangles. These are a bit bigger, about 7" tall, and were cut from 2.75" strips. Strips about a yard long yield two triangles.

This is the original fabric, a very traditional style border. There are really only three distinct "stripes": the cream with brown, the lighter blue with diamonds, and the darker blue with floral. There's a similarity to the resulting triangles that I think would be a bit bland if I cut any more of them. The previous set of triangles from the brightly colored fabric were more interesting to me. I think this technique will work best with lots of colors and a variety of stripe widths.

In other quilty news, we had our mail forwarded last week and received a big box full of small, squishy, happy packages. It's been over a month since our last delivery and I guess I must have been subconsciously ordered myself lots of Christmas gifts. I also received a pinwheel quilt pattern from Val's Quilting Studio; thanks, Val!

A fat quarter bundle of gorgeous emerald greens, plus some nice tonal yardage. That pale yellow butterfly fabric will make a good background. And of course, bright stripes are always useful.

A big batch of neutral fabrics: pale gray flowers/snowflakes/thingies, darker gray giraffe spots, black and white stripes and spots, plus two 6-yard pieces of marbled black and navy blue. Someone was having a sale right after the holidays, if I remember correctly.

I also picked up a couple of nice panel fabrics. 

Italian food theme. Yum!

Lurid, crazy-eyed kitties.

Celestial faces by Dan Miller. I love his designs.

A FQ bundle of Laurel Burch fishes and swirls in her signature bright colors. This is from the older "Ocean Songs" line so I only paid $6.50 for ten FQs. Sa-weet!

A nice cream and yellow rooster background, bigger bright chickens, and backyard songbirds. I've sort of been on a chicken fabric kick lately and have enough for a good sized quilt now. Wild bird prints always appeal to me, too, the more realistic the better. Chickens can be funky, though.

And finally, the gal on eBay who makes men's ties out of science fabric had another big batch of scraps for sale, so I scooped them up. The project I started with the last batch is still in progress and will be one of the next things I work on. 

That's after I finish my Hillside Houses lap quilt. I'm in the middle of the FMQ, and here's a single house sneak preview. The lighter fabric is printed with a wood grain, so I stitched a wood grain in the darker shadowed side of this house. There are 18 houses, each with two different fabrics for the house sides plus a gray roof. I decided to do different FMQ designs in each of those 54 sections, but ran out of ideas and motivation at around a dozen. Eh, that's plenty.