Gifting makes me happy!

 We have had a very busy week as we had a new central heating boiler and a new water tank fitted. It was a big two days job which was done very professionally. One gas engineer worked solidly both days, a second engineer came for part of the first day and an electrician too. However it was a pleasure to have them. Most of the work was done by the first guy. He told us he had two little sons, a baby 6 weeks old and a two and a half years old toddler. I was so impressed with the great job he did, clearing up and walking us through the new system that I decided to offer him two of my finished quilts( both of them in the pile of quilts for the Linus Project) for his little ones  and he was really delighted. That made my day.

These are the two quilts I gifted:

Like many other quilters I just love making these quilts but give them away and I get such a lot of pleasure when they are well received like these were.

I also managed to do a lot of sewing, shutting myself away in my sewing room well away from all the hustle of engineers. I have done almost all of the machine quilting on my RSC String blocks quilt and hope to finish this next week.

I also re-watched a few tutorials by Pola Quilting. More string blocks using a narrow white centre strip. I have used this idea a lot and as I have lots of white scraps and a basket of strings I decided to make enough for a quilt to donate to the local Maternity Unit. They have to be 24” square so 36 x 4.5” square should be perfect. I chain pieced them and trimmed them and laid them out. That was when I discovered I couldn’t count as I had only made 33 blocks. However tomorrow  I’ll make the extra three.

Linking up with Angela’s SoScrappy blog.

Improv Green scraps RSC now a flimsy!

 Last week I made the centre panel for my Improv Green Scraps flimsy.

I had decided I needed to make each of the three panels symmetrical- that’s me, can’t seem to be free and easy like Cathy K!

Anyway I made lots of 9 Patches from 2” green strips of fabric, adding a little yellow to some of them to connect with the yellow sashing round the centre of the elephants/ string blocks. Have a few left over which I’ve got an idea for. Oh dear, squirrel alert!

As I thought, last week I made two mirror image panels for the top and bottom panels,  using up some scraps completely which is great.

It’s now a flimsy and I’m pleased with it. Just enough pops of yellow to lift the green.

My intention is to make a pieced backing, using up more bits and pieces. That’s for next week.

The story of the little Pink RSC scraps quilt continues!

I loved this little Pink quilt, happy to use up some scraps, already made Wonky stars, borders added from the few pink pieces I had and even using the trimmings from basting the quilt to use for the binding.

Having offered it to my neighbour for any baby girl she knew of (No) I kept it. Earlier this week I had a visit from my Pastoral Care lady from church. She updated me on her family - her daughter who lives in Australia, her wedding which they attended and her granddaughter Florence now 3 months old. And their daughter’s family’s trip back to the UK for Easter. After she left I thought of that little Pink Quilt. I made an embroidered label “ Welcome to the World, Florence” and will gift it tomorrow at church, Easter Sunday. I’m thrilled  - something told me to keep it and here’s the reason.

Happy journey back to Australia, little quilt.

Another follow up to last week’s post was Helen’s visit with Etta on Monday.

I gifted the Twinkler Star quilt to Etta and her reaction when she took it out of the gift bag and spread it out on the carpet was simply amazing! She shrieked, lay full length on it, exclaimed at different squares in the blocks, found some scraps of fabrics in her baby quilt and got us all playing I Spy! As my husband said after they left “You couldn’t have wished for a better reaction “. True. John took a couple of super photos of Etta lying on the quilt with a grin from ear to ear. I’m not putting one here because I’m not happy to put photos of children into my blog.

Then upstairs for Helen to choose a Playmat quilt for her friend’s one year old son. I had two piles of quilts for her to choose from: definite ideas for Playmats (including the one I made especially last week) and others I felt were girly or Project Linus quilts. Helen dithered between the new Playmat - although she didn’t know I had made it especially- and another with lots of green fabrics because her friend likes green. Etta chose for her - the new Novelty fabrics Playmat.

Here are the quilts ready for Project Linus donations:

And in a pile:

So, I feel this has been a successful week for sewing and gifting. I’ve finished lots of scraps, used some of my blocks from RSC blocks stashes and felt happy about the destination of three of my quilts. Nice feeling. Onwards and upwards - my school house motto!

Joining with Angela’s RSC So scrappy blog.