String quilt with stars; Twin quilt #1

I decided that I am working in a series! The blue is not the first in this but it is the latest, I have at least 4 in mind for this 'series'.
It HAS been awhile....I have been sewing though so I have a top to show you.

Here is a charity top we (our Women's church group) got to this point. I LOVE it...we just sorted fabric into light and dark piles and sewed them together. Here is the EQ7 version;

I planned it with 7 x 12" blocks, but really? I cut the width to 7.5 and then just straightened the bottom and top pieces and left them ....however long they came out. Did I tell you I LOVE this top? (It would be bordered and quilted BUT I purchased a dark blue for the outer border, washed it, ironed it! and lost it.) The mix of mediums across the dark and light rows I really like.....SO...
A niece was put in the hospital to wait out the birth of her high risk twins and I decided those babies needed a quilt and so started out to make this:

I added the stars for fun....Each of the stars take 1.5 - 2 hours to make

but the rest? EASY, Easy, Easy.

Each block is 6 x 6 but, again, I just straightened the edges of the length. A friend donated some of her pink scraps to the mix so I had plenty of variety for the pink blocks.

So it looked like this;

Clearly I had plenty of scraps....this just scratched the surface so I changed it to this;

With the outer border being pieced. BUT not just piano keys I decided to work some curved seams and some tiny inserts of fabric.

These are cut 4.5 inches wide. So now it is at this stage;

And the twins were born 2 weeks ago and a doing really well for 2 lbs 7 oz and 1 lb 13 oz. babies. I plan to have this (and the twin of it) done by their due date in July.
41 x 51

Vicki has a linky group of others working in a series...here.

More charity quilts

 Lisa's quilt as you go project to use up scrap flannel turned out great. She did 2 of these.All I did was donate scraps of batting (makes me happy to have scrap batting leave my house.)

 Then she did 3 more flannel tops that I quilted. I had a terrible time with the camera and took pictures of all of them but cannot find 1 of the others.

The missing one is also pink and green. They were all lovely to quilt; Lisa gets her quilts even and square.

 This one we worked on together; a disappearing 4-patch which turned out great. we cut it when we cut the zigzag, using the same fabrics.

We did 7 quilts this year. They were donated to 'Angels on the Ground' and a Woman's shelter.

Zigzag Charity Quilt

It is finally completely finished.

57 x 78. I blogged about the top here. The quilting got finished in July, before my surgery. Lisa got it and bound it. We did 8 quilts this year. I'll post them all eventually. My camera is giving me fits so the pictures that were taken have to be redone. The back:

The back is an all over that I saw here, Starry night. Love it.

More progress...and a finish!

I'm plugging away at this Irish chain;

I've got ALL the crosshatching done and this week I will concentrate on the centers. Here is the first one. I took it out of the frame to do some ripping after finishing the straight lines and decided to put the label on where it would get quilted to the back of the quilt. So it is back in the frame and ready to get quilted!

But I had to pause and make a little donation quilt for my guild;

 These are small blocks; 2.25 across. Each strip was cut at 1.25 inches. An exchange I did 18 years ago, while pregnant with Jeffrey.

 I made over 150 blocks and have never done anything with them.

So this is finished except for a label and will get turned in tonight.

Now I have 2 weeks to make a small donation quilt for the other quilt guild....wish these things were spaced out a little bit more!

Big zig zag quilt

While I can still remember what we did....Cut 4 4" strips of each of 13 fabrics. (If you want to copy us exactly you can cut 14 fabrics BUT the zig on the edge of the quilt only needs 2 strips, so the improved design has the zig on either side the same.) Four cuts will make 20 blocks of each fabric, which is more than you need. (if you use all 20 the quilt will be about 95" long) You need 18. Using scraps of the fabric arrange them in the order you want the zigzags. I just pinned them to a yard of fabric that was sitting on the table. 2 strips of each color sewn to the fabric of the zig above and 2 strips sewn to the fabric of the zig below.  Press the seam toward the dark and then cut it so that you have 5--7.5" squares from each paired strip. You will use 9 from one set and 9 from the other. That makes the quilt 60 x 82 before quilting, (cause that is not done yet.)

Arrange your blocks in the order of the zigs.9 cream and brown, then 9 brown and green then 9 green and gold etc..Each time you take a block off the pile, i.e. a cream and brown, take the rest of that color and turn it upside down next to your pile, making a 'discard pile'. Then when it's time to start a new row, just add the unused colors upside down on top of the 'discard' pile and turn the whole stack over and start again. The first 2 rows seam a bit confusing then it becomes very easy.
We worked as a team, I pinned the row together, Lisa sewed the blocks together then sewed the row to the previous rows and then grabbed the set of blocks that I'd pinned and had ready for her.
Remember the pain that I had with the bias edges on the yellow and gray quilt? This one WILL NOT HAVE THAT PROBLEM, I hope. This is why;

• before cutting I turned the quilt over, starched the edge and
• ironed a 2" wide piece of iron on interfacing on the bias where it would be trimmed.
• Then I stay stitched the edge after cutting it. 
  

But only time will tell. I'm waiting for 5 yards of back fabric to tap me on the shoulder and say I'm ready.

Until then I have charity quilt #2 to work on, a disappearing 4 patch.

zigzag charity quilt

I help my congregation make several charity quilts each year. Tuesday we started with a potluck soup night and cut up the 14 yards of fabric they brought into strips and squares for 3 quilts. We asked for donations of 1 yard pieces of 'man' fabric. (It took so much less time than when we used scraps to make them, like here.) Here is the top of the first one;

Pretty neat. Consider 2 women learned how to use a rotary cutter and 2 of them did not know how to sew...and they all sewed at least a strip or 2. There was a baby there that the woman not working got to hold. So they took turns. We got together Wednesday and Thursday afternoon too. I get to press it and trim it ..and quilt it. We have until September to finish them all.

I think we are off to a good start!

Charity quilts

Here are the quilts that I helped our congregation make this year:

 This was making fabric with my small scraps of pink.

 This fabric was donated by a local teacher

 and so was the purple with fairies.

 This one I enjoyed quilting with apple blossoms, straight/wobbly lines and a wood grain in the border.

The back and border are apples;

The red one was sewn by a young girl, about 14, during one of our all day quilting meetings. I had a lot of help with these quilts. Thank-you Ladies!
They are being donated to cancer patients.
Now we can start on next year's donation....

Saturday 'quilting'

Saturday about 100 women got together to finish tying some quilts, look at quilts, work on diapers for Kenya. As the afternoon wore on we were joined by about 100 more women, then we were served dinner by the men and then we met in the chapel for inspiring words from our church leaders. Here are the quilts we worked on this year (again) and a few of the ones other congregations worked on.

 The quilts that were tied that day were 'pillowcased' so that they had no binding and were finished except for the tying before arriving. We put a thin interfacing over the quilt and tie through the holes that have been put in the interfacing in a regular grid. This keeps the knots spaced evenly.

 This is the mile-a-minute I designed using the smaller of my scraps. Then others created it. I blogged about it here and here.

I quilted suns across one of the rows, then a row of clouds and birds, then mountains, rivers and finally the ground covered with flowers.

 These one you've seen many times; we worked on it 2 years.

These blocks were donated and then my assistant sewed them together.

This was an easy quilt; made with 12 inch blocks by different
members of our congregations then put together at one our meetings.

 This top was paper pieced by my assistant over several years of vacations. The one below was a top donated to us, it's a cool looking quilt with lots of small pieces. I particularly like the way the light triangles frame the center.

 The colors of this were great; a very pretty quilt.

For some reason I can't get between the remaining pictures to comment.  I particularly liked the big stitches that were quilted in on the red quilt.
I counted 42 quilts being donated Saturday. Now to get busy with next years!

Charity quilt

Today is the day we give our charity quilts to our congregation for them to be donated...I finished the last one Thursday and my friend, Lisa, bound it for us.

 I love this quilt. As I quilted it I went down memory lane since most of the fabric scraps were mine.

 There is a scrap from most every quilt I've made and every outfit I made for my kids....

I've started sewing rectangles to make myself one...but I'm out of turquoise scraps but still have plenty of the other colors...

on my frame..

I've been putting off quilting this; it is loaded now and has to be done by Wednesday....

What I think it needs will take too much time. It IS a charity quilt but I really love how it looks and would love to do a custom job....but I have work to do too....so what should I do? How would you quilt this?

Two Charity quilts

I have two of our congregation's charity quilts done with one on the machine and 2 more to go;

The top was donated already finished. We just found fabric for the back and quilted it. Turned out very nice. Wish more of the charity quilts were this easy!