Something a little different

This one's a little different as the border is paler than the dark centre, which doesn't always work. But I think it looks ok with these blocks and the border is a Lonni Rossi fabric which I liked, bought on sale, and then found very hard to use, so it's nice to see it doing something. I think this would make a nice quilt for the Teen Cancer Trust (my Project Linus lady passes some quilts there if they are more suitable for older kids).

Log Cabin Redux

This is a top which I gave away a while back when I was having a clear out. Dolores and her quilting friends enlarged it a little, added some borders and quilted it up; they will now donate it as a fundraiser for the church which one of them attends. Isn't it nice to see things finished and going to good homes!

...and look - they've even given me a credit on the label!

A previous post shows the progress of the top, for those interested...

Charity Quilt for Marei's Guild, no 2

...and here is the second of the tops which was sent to Marei to finish off and donate to her guild for their charity programs. Both fantastic finishes, hoorah!

Charity Top for Marei's Guild, no 1

A while back, I gave away a load of quilt tops to those interested in doing them up for charity - here's the latest in photos to come back to me - and a photo below of the top with it's backing showing. Great work, Marei - hope the guild appreciates it!

Recognise this?

It started out life a little diffently, but it was one of the tops I passed along to someone else, to use for a charity quilt. In this instance, the lovely Dolores and her group, decided to add to it to make a single bed sized quilt - they have plans for borders already - I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops...

Ramona's finish

A while back, I gave a bunch of quilt tops to folks who were interested in finishing them up for charity or other good causes; my blogging friend Ramona took two of them, and has already finished one up!  She's a lot speedier than I would have been...  Be sure to click through to her blog to see details of the great quilting on this one.  I look forward to seeing the second one finished, too.

Pile of tops

I was thinking today about the sets of blocks I have (many of which I will try to make into tops over my Easter holidays) and then remembered that I have several stacks of tops already waiting to be given away. This is a stack for general giving away (which I'll do again in a month or so - just did one recently, so I'm not ready to do it again so soon), but there is also another stack waiting for a specific person/organisation. Perhaps I should trawl the web for places that might want unquilted tops - I know there are tons of them in the US, but ideally I'd like some in the UK.  Cheaper postage that way!

Free to a good home...or several

no 1: Green and Purple Log Cabin, approx 45" square

As anyone who reads here regularly knows, I make a lot of quilt tops, which I give away to charity, mostly Project Linus. But I don't really want to quilt them first because I'm lazy busy and what really relaxes me is piecing, not quilting so much. The quilting I save for gifts for friends, etc.

Anyway, the main person I regularly send tops to has a bit of a backlog at the moment (not even counting the 7 or 8 tops I have waiting at home for her - not these pictured here!), so I decided it was time to give some of the other tops away elsewhere.  And that's here.

Here are the "rules" of this giveaway.  Anyone, anywhere in the world, may leave a comment asking for one of the tops as long as you intend to use it for charitable purposes.  I don't really mind what charity or how you intend to use it (i.e. quilt it up and give it to a hospital, hospice, nursing home, disaster recovery centre, shelter, whatever; quilt it up and raffle it off for a school, scouts, organisation; sell or raffle the top itself; and so on) - as long as the top is being used for a good cause of some sort - any sort - I don't mind.

I will post the tops out anywhere in the world; you do not need to reimburse me for postage (though if you want to, that's ok, too).  However, it's possible that if more than one person wants a certain top, I may favour UK residents or those who want to make a postage contribution (just depends on who wants these, and where they are). 

So, if you are interested in one (or more) of the tops for your cause, leave a comment, and in a few weeks' time, I'll sort out some recipients, as fairly as I can.  Please feel free to let anyone who you think might be interested, know about this giveaway (and I'll certainly do more of them through the year - though probably only one or two a month, not 8 - I've been accumulating for a while!) 

I've numbered the quilts and put a size (all sizes in inches and  approx - I was measuring quickly on the floor and didn't feel like crawling around all afternoon) and description, for convenience...  Oh, and if you do get a top and finish it off, I'd love to see a photo (though it's not a requirement!)

no 2 - Strippy scrap quilt with polka dot border, approx 43x55"

no 3 - Neutral Background with strips I - approx 36x44

no 4 - Neutral Background with strips II - approx 36x44

no 5 - Crumbs in a square, approx 42" square

no 6 - string log cabin with oriental border, approx 44x52"

no 7 - string log cabins with broccoli border, approx 44" square

no 8 - baby blue rectangles - approx 30x33"

Quilting with Broccoli?

Here's another little quilt, bordered and ready to go to a charitable home - and no, the print in the border fabric isn't trees...

Bags & Apron

Finally got a chance for a little more sewing - it's been incredibly busy this month - so first on the list was to finish off the stuff I'd offered to put together for the library's fundraiser Summer Fair - two more bags and an apron - all from material which was pre-cut - it was just a matter of assembly. I did manage to do one other thing, which I'll show later in the week - doesn't feel like much, though!  The one bad thing about being away all summer will be lack of sewing time - my mother does have a machine, but of course I won't have access to a lot of stuff, either, so I probably won't sew much. Might make some ATCs, of course...

Just seen this in an email - thought I'd share it - I hope they do well - fun to have a photo of the quilt on the poster!

"Tickets for the raffle are available now – the first prize is a fabulous handmade baby's patchwork quilt. Ask at the library for purchase details (50p each or £1 for three). "

Bags

Amidst my more interesting sewing of the weekend, I made these three bags - two shopping bags with shorter handles and one over-the-shoulder bag with a longer straps. These are part of a group of projects I agreed to work on for the Friends group at our local library (for whom I made a baby quilt for raffle). They had had some fabric donated to them, and put out a call for people with sewing machines to assemble some bits and pieces - they precut the fabric, so all I had to do was stitch.  Not very interesting, but at least it was fairly quick.

Low volume baby quilt - finished!

And here's the baby quilt with the binding stitched down - it's off to the library tomorrow so the organiser can have it a few weeks before the fair to sell raffle tickets. It's very sweet - I'm sure someone will enjoy winning it!

Low volume baby quilt

Due to various changes in my weekend plans, I had a little time today to do some quilting - luckily, there was only a little quilting to be done. This is one of two tops I put together from the low-volume heart blocks I won recently in the block lotto.  The other top will go into my baby quilt stash for the next time it's needed, but this one is going to the Friends' group at my local library to help fundraise at their summer fair. 

It's not quite finished yet - still have to do the binding, which I hope I have a chance to attach tomorrow - but at least it's quilted - I just used a simple loop meander with some hearts thrown in. Quick and easy.

Low volume hearts

One of the many tops (or rather, two) that I put together over the weekend are these low-volume hearts. I decided to make them into two baby quilt tops as I thought they really suited the baby quilt idea...  So, here's one top with 16 hearts - this one will get made up fairly soon and donated to our local library's Friends group to help raise money for the library organisation - they are having a fair in July and I have offered a baby quilt for the raffle.

And this one, made from 20 hearts, will go into my personal stash for when I next need a neutral baby quilt. Although looking at the photo, I'm finding the balance a little off - the right hand side is all very light blocks, so I might shift a block or two around.  Or not, depending on how much time I have!

I was left with three blocks - one is one I made myself, which had the same background as two others I made, so I didn't feel bad leaving it out. One is a free, extra "wrong" block one of the players sent me along with her correct blocks - the strips point outward instead of inwards. The third one, there is really nothing much wrong with - it is a tiny bit out on size in the upper right corner (but well within the margin of error) and had a similar background colour to a number of other blocks - and I needed to lose one more block, so it came out. These three will go in my orphans bag, and will either languish there until I use them for something, or, more likely, go with other orphans to a friend who has a quilt ministry and often can use spare blocks.

Purple, Blue and Grey Nine-Patch

So, having a little time to sew today, I worked on finishing off the scrappy blue and purple nine patch - I think this came out well. And thanks to my determination to sew up the rows as I went along, I don't have a big pile of blocks waiting for me to put them together. I have plenty of other piles of blocks, mind you, but not these particular ones.  Think I might send this one back to the US with my mother to go to Sarah's Quilt Ministry. It's a bit big for Project Linus...

Teacups Sampler

 I did say yesterday that I was going to spend some time today quilting (or that I should, at any rate) - so I was very good and did do a little work on the little houses I was working on the other week - not a lot, though, as my shoulder was aching a bit and quilting is a bit tough on it. I haven't taken any photos, though, as the thread was fairly matched today, so it doesn't show well in photos - just textural, really. 

After a half hour or so of that, I decided to move on to something else - something more piecing. I had a selection of fat quarters which I'd been wanting to do something with - I thought they'd make a nice top for a lap quilt maybe for donation to a care home or through Sarah's quilt ministry to someone who is wheelchair bound, or something like that (I threw in a few small pieces of a toning green as well).

I wasn't really sure what to do with them, however, and even looking through some fat quarter books, still wasn't inspired (most of those patterns are for larger quilts and involve background fabric). So I decided to just make a variety of blocks and put them together. The result is a little less controlled than I normally like, but it's still quite sweet and would still, I think, make a nice lap quilt. 

More using things up

Here's another instance of people doing things with stuff I've passed along - this photo came from Sarah's blog - her quilt ministry has made a lovely quilt using a flimsy I sent along to her - the string hearts - with several borders added. It looks fantastic and will go off to someone who hopefully will be really comforted by it. If Sarah lived in the UK rather than the US, I'd send her a lot more flimsies as her quilt ministry is always able to use them and often turns them into really interesting pieces. As it is, I try to send her stuff when my mother comes to visit (she lives in the US, so she'll take a parcel back to the states and post it for me, so it doesn't cost so much).

Thoughts for next year...

This year, I've spent a fair amount of time trying to rid myself of scraps, organise a bit, and declutter. With a fair measure of success, I think! However, I still have loads of scraps, as well as a decent sized collection of smaller pieces of fabric (up to FQ size, say), many of which I'm not crazy about and might not tend to use in works for myself. Especially as I am doing fewer large ones of those these days.

So, I think 2012 will be another year of de-scrapping and de-stashing. And I will probably tackle some of the (slightly) larger pieces, rather than just the little scraps.

I enjoy the entire process of building a quilt - I like choosing the fabrics, I like cutting, I like piecing, joining blocks together, quilting, binding - there's none of it I really hate. However, what I do to relax - the bit I find the most soothing - is piecing blocks.

Which is, of course, why I have so many tops hanging around waiting to be made into quilts. This past year, I have sent many baby quilt tops to Project Linus through my friend Karol-Ann and her local Linus contact, and I will continue to do that next year as well. However, I am also looking for other worthy causes - either other Linus groups, other charities which use quilts or just quilt groups or ministries which make quilts for charitable causes - to send quilt tops to.

If you are involved with such a group and would like a quilt top or two in 2012, please leave a comment - and make sure you are not set to no-reply, so I can contact you in return...

Here's the catch(es):

• I don't intend to make big tops - baby quilt size, or lap size only. Or I would consider some smaller ones, for instance if you work with a charity that does tops for neonatal units or stillborn babies.
• I'd prefer you were in the UK, due to postage costs. Alternatively, I can mail anywhere if you want to reimburse me for postage. (Sarah, if you are reading this, I'll happily donate a top for your ministry when my mother visits at Christmas - she can mail it when she goes back to the US in January, as we've done before.)
• Tops only. These aren't finished quilts, so you or your group need to be willing to finish them yourselves!

I can't promise a quilt top to everyone straight away (some will depend on how much interest there is) but last year, I made at least 2 most months, and sometimes even more, so I think there's space for lots of people to receive, even allowing for a good chunk of them to go to my established place!

Daybright

So, a while back, I got rid of some of my block stash that I was probably never going to do anything with, by sending blocks to various people - often to folks I know through blogging who make charity quilts. This beauty was made by Sarah for her church's quilt ministry (read more here about this particular quilt) so I can take pride in having been part - even if only in a small way - in making this beauty, which she has called Daybright. Works for me... And so much better than the blocks languishing in my sewing room for another year or two. Or three...

Fundraising/Giveaway

So. Normally I try to keep this blog pretty much solely about my artwork and related issues, but occasionally, there must be exceptions... A bunch of us from the school where I work are running or walking the Race for Life to raise money for Cancer Research UK. I have created a fundraising page in order to, well, raise funds! It goes without saying this is a worthy cause, and I would be very grateful to anyone who felt compelled to give, even if only a few pounds.

However, to further (perhaps) provide an incentive, I have decided to have a little giveaway to go with the fundraising. This top (above), which isn't quite finished yet, is one of the tops I'm supposed to be making for my Stay at Home Robin. I am going to finish it (obviously) and offer it as a prize, to someone who has donated to my fundraising efforts - it will work kind of like a raffle. Virtual raffle tickets will cost £5; for each £5 you donate, you will get one chance in the draw for this little quilt (it's 16"x18"). Although I may add some applique to it and will of course quilt and bind it, it will not get any bigger in size. I promise to have it finished and sent to the winner by the end of July (the Race for Life date is 26th June).

Right. So that's enough of that - back to our regularly scheduled programming!