Charitable Giving

This year at Christmas my church is collecting gifts for the Salvation Army.  One of the requested items was blankets, so I decided that I would make a quick and easy quilt.  Here is a picture of the finished top.  It is made completely from my stash.  I liked the idea of using 6 inch (finished) orphan blocks mixed in with print fabric squares.  I didn't have any orphan blocks that matched the color scheme I was going with, so I made a few simple blocks to jazz it up a little bit.  The top is 42-1/2 x 54-1/2 inches.

I plan to machine quilt it myself on my home sewing machine using diagonal line edge to edge quilting.  That way there won't be any threads to bury, unless I run out of bobbin mid-seam!  I'm also planning to machine stitch the binding, which I don't usually do, but there is limited time to get it finished, so I figure that's the safest option at this point.

Foxy Baby Quilt

I finished the burying of threads and binding on this quilt a few days ago, and I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of it or posted about it yet.  It's for my soon-to-be granddaughter.  It doesn't actually have a name yet, because she doesn't have a name yet.  She's due in 4 weeks and her parents haven't settled on a name yet.  Once they do, I'll come up with a name for the quilt that includes her name.  The label will have to wait, too, because I will put her birth date on it.  Other than those things, it's done now.  Yay!

Broken Shells

Today I finished this quilt top.  I'm calling it Broken Shells because it is made with Broken Dishes blocks, but I wanted it to have a beachy feel to it.  It is intentionally low contrast with a sand colored background and light pastel batiks for the blocks.  The lighting isn't great in this picture, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's just want I had imagined when I was designing it. 

Here is different picture with slightly better lighting, but not as good an angle and a lot more junk.

The quilt finishes 58 inches square, so it should make a nice quilt to decorate the back of my sofa in the summertime.

Mermaid Whirlpool

Yesterday I finished this quilt top that I designed for my granddaughter, Lilah.  When I saw the fabric with the mermaids on it in the quilt shop it made me think of Lilah, because she loves water so much. 

I've been wanting to do a simple quilt like this for some time now.  The idea was to use a large piece of fabric on top, a smaller cut of fabric on the bottom, and then have a single row of pieced blocks in between the two.  I decided to go with the snail's trail block because it reminds me of an ocean wave (and the symbol for a hurricane, actually).  I like the way that the spiraling effect of the snail's trail block makes it look like the fabric from the top, bottom, and sides are being pulled in like a whirlpool. 

I just wish that I had made the border just a couple of inches wider.  I felt like 48 inches by 58 inches was a good size for a sofa throw, but I think I would have liked the look of a 6 inch border better than the look of the 4 inch border.  And 52 x 62 would have worked just as well.  I'll keep that in mind if I do one again in the future.