3 Charity Quilts

I've decided not to blog about the less than happy experience with a one day workshop of an out-of-state quilt artist. To be fair, she may have been asked to accomplish too much in too little of a timeframe, or she may have been tired, or I may have expected too much (after having such a wonderful time in MI),or I may have been tired - who knows. A blog is too public of a place for a negative opinion on a one-time event. Plus, our quilting world is a little too small that a negative comment could have negative consequences for a quilt artist whose work I respect and admire. So with that said, I am moving on.

So in the effort to keep my life on a positive path, here are the three twin size quilt tops that I promised to make for Duschene Clinic. They said it didn't matter when they were finished. My friend, Carolyn, who is making another three tops and I decided that if they were all completed by Christmas, they would make nice Christmas presents. I can't tell you yet who they are being made for though, so it can be a secret until the gifting. At any rate, I am quite pleased with them. Not only did they take a lot of fabrics out of my stash, but one of them is also an abandoned UFO. I think once a UFO has ripened in the dark in a box for a while, it gets better with age, don't you? I won't tell you which one it is, since I like all of them equally!

Two of them aren't quite long enough to make a pillow roll, so I used some of the largest pieces of leftover fabric to make matching pillowcases for them!

Two of the backings were pieced, using the remainder of the fabrics. I actually had a large piece of fabric that I had been saving (for who knows what?) that was exactly the size for the third one. They really are all square, but when I put them on my design wall, they hang a bit crooked. And the colors are a bit brighter in person, too. I took these photos in full daylight, with a southern exposure from a lot of windows.

This is just a round and round log cabin block. The centers are about 6" square of a fabric that I just absolutely love. It has dragonflies on it that are so subtle and soft. The strips around the centers were cut at 1.5", and they were actually from a strip swap. I think the blocks look like handkerchiefs. The pillowcase body is made from the dragonfly fabric, and the 4" cuff is made of strips folded over and pressed - sort of like piano keys.

This is another Terry Atkinson pattern called Stepping Stones. It really only makes a large lap throw, so I enlarged the border to make it a small twin. I used the green stepping stone fabric for the body of the pillowcase and the pink floral fabric for the cuff.

This is a Debbie Beaver pattern created for Connecting Threads called Willow Mews. It's large enough to have a pillow roll, so I didn't make a pillowcase for this one. I used another dragonfly fabric on this one for the large squares, but it is a bit more beige and the dragonflies are blue, lavender and green. I made the border wider, and because I ran out of that fabric, I had to improvise and use the last scraps to make the nine patches in the corners to make it all work together.

If you click on the pictures, you can see the prints in the fabrics better. They look plain, but there really is more detail in all of them than shows up in the smaller versions.

I've more or less got the other commitments planned: a lap size and two baby quilts for the February auction. Carolyn and I are also splitting up making large and small stars for the queen size quilt due to Duschene by February as well.

In my spare time, I got the binding machine stitched to my Happy Jacks Pumpkin Patch quilt that Bonnie from Quiltville quilted for me. I want to get that hand stitched soon so I can get it on my display wall before Halloween!