I decided to keep the block that I originally made for the guild raffle, and make a different block to enter. I don't feel any great desire to keep this one. One of the other members made a block that was largely purple fabrics, and I thought that a pink and purple block could work well with that one. It's hard to imagine that all the blocks together would make a cohesive looking quilt. I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I won them.
I finished my Frogs and Bugs charity quilt today. The name is really unofficial because I don't generally name charity quilts. Often times I don't even label them at all. This one will have a label, but the charity has very specific things that they want on the label, and a name for the quilt isn't one of them. The point person at my guild has labels printed, so I don't need to make the label either. But since it is made from fabric with frogs and fabric with bugs, I'm calling it my Frogs and Bugs quilt.
I quilted it on my longarm with a hand-guided all-over still water design. The thread is Isacord Spring Frost, and the batting is 100% polyester Soft Light-Loft from Mountain Mist (the charity requests polyester batting, but I don't like it). The binding is attached by machine to the back of the quilt, turned to the front, and machine stitched with a straight stitch on the front. The charity also requests that the binding (and label) be attached by machine. Apparently a lot of the quilts go to orphanages and they say having everything attached by machine holds up better to the orphanage's laundry practices.
Another new thing with my quilt guild, now that I've started back going, is that they do a quilt block raffle every other month. My understanding is that every block you make counts as a chance for winning all the blocks (sometimes half the blocks if there are a lot?). Everyone uses that same pattern, but the fabrics are all individual and therefore different.
I made this block for next month's raffle. It is made from left over Kansas Troubles fabrics that I had in my stash. I tried to focus mostly on red fabrics for the darker patches, and yellowed creams for the lighter patches to make a cohesive looking block. The block measures 16-1/2 inches square.
The problem is that I really like the block, so I'm not sure I want to enter it in the raffle. Maybe I want to keep it and make more blocks to go with it. I could make a really pretty quilt for the back of my loveseat. Maybe I want to make a block with totally different fabrics, that I don't like as well, to enter in the raffle. I guess I need to decide.
I finished this quilt top yesterday. The frog block in the center is an orphan block that I've had up on a design board for literally years. I had originally planned to make 4 of the frog blocks for a baby quilt, but I decided against that idea. I've been planning this quilt for a while now, but I've just finally gotten around to it. The frog block is 15 inches, and I added a 1-1/2 inch border around it to make an 18 inch square for the center. The surrounding fabrics are mostly blues and greens with both frog and bug fabrics, too. Those are 6 inch squares. The inner border is 1-1/2 inches and the outer border is 6 inches. The quilt will finish at 45 inches by 57 inches.
This month I started back going to quilt guild and found out that my guild now supports Quilts Beyond Borders, a charity providing quilts to children in under-served areas of the world. I had always planned to give this quilt to charity in some fashion, so now I have a good outlet for that.
