A Trio of Quilts

 I finished the last of the Trio of Quilts that I intend to donate to a Gift Shop in town. Its profits go to 

The Samaritans, an excellent organisation which helps so many desperate people.

 

The First quilt measures 38” square

And its pieced backing

The Second quilt measure 36” square 

And its pieced backing 

And the Third Quilt which measures 40” square

And its pieced backing 

All three used Crumb blocks that were already in my stash and fabrics and scraps I had to hand. Some scraps had been gifted to me, others were leftovers from previous projects.

I had to be inventive with the backing as I don’t have too many large pieces of fabric  in my stash.

The turquoise quilt used up a piece of fabric I had acquired several years ago when one of my quilting friends, Helen, was downsizing. It’s actually a Christmas fabric and until this quilt I had never found just the right place to use it. The fabric was not big enough for a whole backing so I added the turquoise solid strip to make it fit which I think ties it in nicely with the front of the quilt.

I had a piece of pretty pink with tiny white spots fabric that I thought would be suitable for the backing of the quilt with the mauve spotted border. Again it wasn’t large enough so I added strips either end of a bright Starry fabric which has been in my stash for years and years! (I still have some left!)

And finally the Quilt with the bright pink spotted border required even more juggling to create a backing. I didn’t have enough of the pink of the inner border but by piecing some of the bright outer border fabric I managed to create a large enough backing. 

I always cut binding fabrics at 2.5” but I already had quite a lot of the outer border fabric cut at 2.25” (leftovers from a previous quilt) so I decided to cut a few more strips at that width and use those leftover strips. I was delighted with this binding and from now on I’ll always use this 2.25” width. It makes a really neat edge to the quilt.

So, three baby quilts, all machine quilted, and ready to take to the shop owner.

Pink Production Line

 RSC 2021’s colour for this month is Pink.  I had a plan for the blocks I wanted to make but then our daughter suggested I make some baby quilts for a local Charity Shop in aid of The Samaritans.

So I’ve made three flimsies, one almost a finished quilt ( hand sewing the binding now) and two flimsies which I think I can say are Pink - definitely girl colours anyway!

These aren’t great photos. I can assure you they are brighter, more interesting colours than these photos show!

The top one has now been basted and I hope to start the machine quilting tomorrow.

One of the blocks I chose for RSC 2021 was small Wonky Stars, finishing at 4”.

I’ve made 6. Happy with them but my favourite with the little pink elephant fabric nearly drove me crazy. It’s the bottom left block in the photo above. I have great problems with spacial  awareness so getting the elephants in each square oriented the correct way was a nightmare! The seam ripper was used so many times, it was ridiculous.

Linking with Angela’s So scrappy RSC 2021 blog.

Final finishes

 I have just completed the last Premature baby quilt for my local hospital which I think my Patchwork Group will hand over just before Christmas.

I have made 5 and they are nice and bright and cheerful.

 

 

3 were made using 4" Crumb blocks & 4" squares from stash:

 

 

 

 

 

 

One used up my last remaining scrap from a piece of novelty fabric I was gifted several years ago.

I used the elephant/jungle scrap as the centre for a medallion-style quilt. The 2.5" squares and strips for borders were all from stash:

 

 

And this last quilt used my last frog squares:

 

I have enjoyed making these little quilts ( 15" x 20") and hope they will bring joy to the parents of premature babies.

 

 

 

 

 

Donation quilts handed over

I love making small quilts, especially if scraps are involved. I enjoy making Premature baby quilts to donate to my local hospital which is dear to my heart.

I have been a presenter with Hospital Radio there for 17 years, over 11of those years  as Duty Producer.  I recently stood down from this role as I have had health problems for almost 3 years now but I will continue to produce and present some programmes.

As a retired Primary teacher, children and babies are of the utmost importance to me, so I love making quilts for the Premature babies.  Since the latter part of 2013 I have been making some Premature baby quilts, completing two more this year.  Our hospital prefers a size of 20" x 15" so now that I have completed six and I had a hospital appointment there too this afternoon, I decided to take them into the Unit today.

This is the 6th quilt I finished a few days ago:

 

This quilt was made from bright scraps left over from a bundle of fat eigths which had been given to me as a gift.

 

All six quilts are bright and made mostly from scraps.  Two feature Crumb squares turned into HSTs paired with a lime Kona solid  and two more have a rabbit novelty fabric and small HSTs made into small blocks and made into rows.

 

Each quilt has a variety of binding fabrics: some have the same binding for the whole quilt, some have a scrap binding effect using leftover bits of binding from my stash.

 

Backings are a mixture too: 

The 2 Crumb/lime HST quilts have a recycled sheet for the backing.

One has a recycled blue gingham shirt which came from one of my husband's shirts as the collar was  worn.

 

The other two backings were suitably sized pieces from my stash.

 

All of the quilts are hand quilted, some with Perle cottons, some with regular quilting thread.

 

Here they are:

 

The two on the Top Row were made this year, the Bottom Row were completed in 2013.

My next photo shows the backings:

The nurses were delighted with the quilts and I was thrilled to hand them over.  I hope they bring joy and happiness to some families.

 

 

 

Little People Premature baby quilt

 

 

First finish of 2014! Ta da!

 

This is my first finished quilt of 2014.

As I have been in New Zealand since the beginning of the year I have done very little sewing.  I belong to two Patchwork groups here and I needed some sewing to take to meetings so  I had some hand quilting to do.
I made two simple Premature baby quilts and a few days ago I finished the first one.

All the fabrics were in the small stash I keep here.  I can't even remember where I got the feature fabric but think it was some fabric scraps someone in the group was clearing out.  It is very quirky and I wonder if it is from the 1940s or 1950s. I think it was originally used to make a child's dress and the scraps were odd shapes, like you would have left over from dressmaking.
If anyone has an idea about the age of the fabric please leave me a Comment on this post.

Today I went to my last Patchwork meeting before we go back to the UK and I worked on the second small quilt.  Same design, different fabrics.  I will donate both to my local hospital in the UK.

I have also been making some Soy Amado blocks for Alison of little island quilting and will blog tomorrow about those.