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.

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?

Red Crosses

When I first started piecing this quilt, I didn't have a plan beyond wanting to try the pattern. It was in an older issue of a magazine and I cut it out and tucked it away in my files. A few months ago, I found the pattern again. The large squares were supposed to be single pieces of fabric, cut 8.5" on a side. 

I've been making crumb blocks in that size for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for the last two years, and thought it would be fun to use some of those blocks for the squares. I had a ton of blue blocks, and a recent purchase of red fabric was sitting on my cutting mat. Red, white and blue always look jaunty, so I pieced it up.

In the pattern drawing, the squares take center stage, but as I stitched those red pieces in, the cross shapes are what really stood out. The quilt became Red Crosses, and whispered to me that it wanted to comfort one of my friends who is a nurse. While I've known T for many years, we aren't super close, so I kept thinking, "It's kinda weird to give a quilt to someone you haven't seen in so many years. And R/W/B is kinda rah-rah patriotic, right?" But the quilt whispered, "I think you should send me to T."

T is part of our group of motorcycle friends who live in California, and they keep in touch via Facebook. I'm not on FB, so Sean fills me in when there's news in the group. As Covid cases get worse and worse in the West, he's been telling me about how T is so tired and stressed and overworked and frustrated. She lives up in the mountains where it snows and is getting cold and dark. It sounds like 2020 is grinding away at her! The quilt stopped whispering and said out loud, "Hello? When are you going to send me there to do my work of keeping her warm and comforted?" 

So last week, I did. I shipped out Red Crosses, wondering if T would think it was really strange to get a quilt out of the blue. What if it clashes with her home? But I shouldn't have worried, because quilts just know where they are needed. T says she loves her quilt and it made her teary. And that's the very best thing for a quilter to hear!

Linking up with the Hands2Help "Hometown Heroes" challenge. 

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!

Scrappy Quilts Beyond Borders

Hello, friends! Today I'm sharing three little finishes for Quilts Beyond Borders, all made from my ever-growing scrap piles. This ziggedy-zaggedy one was made with 3.5" strips and squares in blues, greens, and purples. I must have been channeling Sandra since those are her signature colors! I had a hankering to use my Tri-Recs ruler and saw this block pattern...somewhere. 

If I were a better quilt blogger, I would keep meticulous notes on where I found the pattern and would share a link with you in case you wanted to try it. But alas, I'm not great at keeping track. I kinda quilt from the hip, to be honest. If I find the pattern again (I can picture it in my head!) I'll come back and link it here.

Meanwhile, here's a close up of the design. It consists of triangle-in-a-square blocks that alternate with squares, and it used lots of scraps! I quilted it with squiggly lines running along the zigs and zags, cream thread in the lights and turquoise thread in the darks.

The back is this cool fabric in the same colors that I've been holding for just the right quilt. I love it! The finished size is 42"x50", a little smaller than most QBB quilts. It will be going to a child in foster care and the compact size fits easier into a backpack.

The next quilt is this funky, scrappy herringbone design. It is made from 4.5"x12.5" strips that are pieced together using partial seams. The good news: I did keep track of where I learned this technique. It was from this video. The bad news: it was a PITA (pain in the ankle) and I can't really recommend it!

I suppose if you really LOVE partial seams, you could give it a try. But I found it kind of tedious and never did figure out a good way to iron the seams properly. That being said, it makes an interesting design and I'm glad I did it. Once. It's hard to be too unhappy with a quilt that has herds of zebras in it, right?

To quilt it, I did some rough and ready feathers that followed the back and forth shapes of the herringbone. Since the scraps were already trimmed to the 4.5" width, this blue dinosaur fabric ended up saying "hump" instead of "thump" in several places. If this ends up in the hands of a 11 year old boy, there might be snickering.

However, the backing made of pink kitties and yellow mushrooms might push it a bit too far into girlie territory. 

The last quilt is made of 2.5" squares and strips. The design is from a short quilt along by...someone. Oh, dear. I've completely lost track of whose blog it was on. I'd love to give her credit but I just can't find it again. Does it look familiar to anyone? It was another great scrap buster and went together fast and easy.

The back of this one might be more appealing to that 11 year old boy, with a truck theme. I have no idea where I got these monster truck and bright construction equipment fabrics, but aren't they fun?

Here's the entire back. Almost as scrappy as the front! The quilting is simple diagonal lines through each block, using my walking foot. The more free motion quilting I do, the less I like using the walking foot. It's sooooo much slower and causes more puckering. But for long straight lines, it is the tool of choice.

We've moved on from this dock in Virginia and are now moving south through a rather remote part of North Carolina. This will post automagically while we're probably out of internet coverage, so if you don't hear back from me for a few days after you comment, don't worry!

And speaking of comments, lately I've been getting more "no reply" commenters, which means I do not have access to your email address. That means I can't reply directly back to you when you kindly leave comments here. Cindy, you said you spotted one of your blocks in my quilt. That's so neat! I'd love to chat with you about that but I don't have your email address. Annie, you asked about how I receive mail. I wrote about that on this post, if you want to check it out. You can learn more about no-reply commenters here.

 

Hobo Heart

Back in August, which was decades ago, Sarah posted a photo of a new Jen Kingswell design called "Boho Heart." I was immediately smitten with the idea of forming one giant heart out of many smaller blocks. That squirrel ran up my leg and sat in my lap, chattering, "Drop everything and make it!"

At the time, the pattern wasn't available to purchase, so I decided to use the photo as inspiration and wing it using orphan blocks donated to Covered in Love and lots of scrappy white and cream for the background. 

I chose orphan blocks with bright, saturated colors and black accents for this one. Check out those fun, wonky stars!

I love this card trick block, too. Along the diagonal edges of the heart shape, I used various sizes of half square triangles with one half bright, the other half white/cream. Finding and accurately placing those HSTs was the hardest part, and many partial seams were needed. 

For the back, I used lots of wild, bright chunks. Some were a bit too bright and the colors bled all the way through to the front. Yikes! Fortunately, a second washing using blue Dawn dishwashing soap removed all the bleeding. Whew!

The quilting is almost invisible among the scrappiness, just simple stippling in the heart and floppy feathers in the background. The binding is scrappy brights from my leftover binding strips.

I'm calling my derivative version Hobo Heart as a nod to our traveling life, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm grateful to Jen Kingswell for her amazing design idea, and to Sarah for sharing it. Piecing square blocks of all sizes into the heart shape was a real brain puzzle: challenging and rewarding. I'll definitely be making another one!

If you're interested in making the official version, the pattern is now available in many shops. A quick search should pull up a number of purchasing options.

Hooray for the Red, White and Blue

Today's four Covered in Love finishes all have have a patriotic flair. Red, white and blue quilts are especially appreciated by the families of veterans. Kat tries to have a block drive in these classic American colors each year, and that means there are always a few orphan blocks left over for me to work with.

This first quilt is made with orphans from her Hunter's Star block drive. They make up the center of the piece. The two sailboats were sewn as lotto blocks by a member of my online guild, Sunshine. They are flanked by a few other blue blocks from other Covered in Love block drives.

The side columns are string blocks that I made. Someone donated a baggie of red, white and blue strings and I put lights on one half of each string block and darks on the other. That made it easy to make a zig zag design.

I did a different quilting motif in each section, just kind of doodling my way across the quilt. This square spiral design is a fun one to do with the walking foot, and I learned it in a Craftsy class taught by Jacquie Gering.

For the back, I used some striped fabric that I found on eBay for a steal. You'll see a lot of this for a while as I use it up! 

A few nautical scraps pick up the sailboat theme from the front. And finally, the white premade binding was donated by Nicki, making for a quick finish.

The second quilt is made from churn dash blocks that were donated as a set by Jacomina. Aren't they fun? I added cornerstones, sashing and a thin border to get up to a nice donation size.

These were fun to quilt with a different design in each block. These wavy-gravy swoops are so easy; I first saw the motif on Fiona's blog and now I want to use it All. The. Time.

The white sashing is actually the back side of a neat fabric. It has a bright red and blue metallic fireworks design. However, the sparkly ink is rather rough, so I've put that to the inside of the quilt, letting just a subtle hint of the fireworks show through.

The back uses more of that stripe and some other random chunks.

This firework fabric also has metallic sparkles, very cool! But it is nice and smooth, so I was happy to find a place for it on the back. The binding is another nice premade one from Nicki.

The third quilt actually earned a name: Deep in the Heart of Texas. And yes, it is sideways. This one definitely has a top and bottom!

There, that's a little better. We'll just set gravity aside for a moment while we talk about all these amazing blocks!

When I found the three red and white houses in the box of orphans, I knew they needed to be featured. And since home is where the heart is, when a couple of cute red hearts appeared, they were perfect to nestle between the houses.

Check out that cool Texas applique block! So fabulous! It was already stitched to the two flag hearts, and all that row needed were some wings on the ends to take flight.

Some of the supporting players tell little stories, too. How about that baseball fabric? Too bad I couldn't find any Mom or apple pie blocks. But I did find friendship stars, chunky churn dashes, and other classic quilty goodness. A little baby blue sashing between the rows, some simple stippling, and the neighborhood is complete!

You'll be shocked, SHOCKED! to see this red white and blue stripe on the back. I told you it was a good deal. Since Covered in Love is based in Texas, I'm sure this quilt will find just the right home, home on the range.

Last but not least, a scrappier bit of patriotic fervor. This quarter log cabin block quilt is primarily red, white and blue, but there are also bits of other colors. Those little pops of purple and green add a lot of interest, I think. A few of the fabrics have words and logos from the Armed Forces, too.

Each block started with a black and white nine patch and about half of them were complete when donated as orphans. 

I added strips from my own scrap strings to bring the remaining blocks up to a consistent size. I really like the final look of these blocks and will probably make this style of string block again. This one also called for a simple stipple, since the quilting is lost among the scraps. The binding is completely scrappy, too, in dark shades of blue, black and burgundy.

The back is made of red and black flannel for extra snuggly warmth and softness. Extra bulk, too. Maybe it wasn't so smart to take the biggest top, with the most seams and the most weight, and add a heavy backing. That boat pole holding up the quilt is sagging a bit as the quilt dangles over the water!

There you go, four American quilts. Which one makes you want to sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee"?