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.

 

 

 

Last 2 quilt finishes for 2013

I am a fan of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog.  I love scrappy quilts and think Bonnie's ideas for using up small scraps accords with my approach to quilt-making.  Hence my Crumb blocks and the quilts that I create from them.

Another of Bonnie's ideas is her "Leaders and Enders" projects.  Instead of using scrap bits of fabric as Thread-catchers she adds to blocks for her next project.  In this way she sews a whole pile of blocks as a sideline to the quilt she is focussing on.

This is how I make my Crumb blocks and how I have made these two little Premature Baby Quilts:

 

I had been given a huge pile of scrap triangles, trimmings from blocks a prolific quilting friend had collected together.  She knows I enjoy using the tiniest of scraps, so as a series of "Leaders and Enders" projects I first created the small HST squares and then put them together in fours to make the kite-style blocks.

 

I had some of the Rabbit fabric left over from a child's quilt I had made for Ava so cut strips of this to intersperse with the kite-block strips.  Then more scrap string for the borders and I had made two Premature baby sized quilts.

 

I had a quick sort through more small left over pieces of fabric for the backing  and another look through my bag of leftover bindings and I was able to complete the little quilts.  One has pink binding scraps joined together and the other a mixture of blue scraps.

 

 

So, my final two Quilt finishes of 2013.

 

After these were finished I sorted out my sewing room.  Put all the scraps away neatly in drawers and sorted out my Crumb blocks-in -the-making tin so I could leave it with the lid shut!

Then a big dusting and Hoovering session and the room is packed away until 2014.

 

Only one more thing to do now - embroider a label for this quilt:

 

Baby Charlie was born on 11th December so this is a gift to welcome him to the world.  I will post it after Christmas to, hopefully! , avoid it getting lost in the Christmas Post Rush.

 

 

Strangely I have just realised that the Rabbit fabric leftover strips were from Charlie's big sister Ava's quilt!

 

Happy Christmas!

 

 

14th Quilt finished this year

I sewed the binding on to my I Spy Blue Freckles quilt yesterday which makes it the 14th Quilt I have completed so far this year. I am so pleased at this total, especially as 4 of them were UFOs.

Here's my finished quilt:

 

My New Year Resolution was to use up some of my stash and scraps and that really happened with this quilt.

 

• All the 'Freckles" were cut from fabrics in my stash, some have been there for a long time, many of them used in other Freckles Quilts or other child/baby quilts.
• The backing is from a piece I bought several years ago from Spotlight in New Zealand.  It was a bargain and I bought 3 yards to use as backing.  Up until this quilt I have always felt it wasn't quite the "right" fabric for the backing.  However, with this quilt I decided not to be so fussy:  it is a typical baby fabric and although it is a contrast to the front which has such bold colours I think it works.  Being paler shades it shows up the bright turquoise Perle cotton hand quilting very well.
• Again, using my principle of using up I looked in my bag of spare bits of binding, all left overs from various quilts I have made over the years.

This is quite an old photo of my bag of scrap bindings and several of these have already been used.
However, I found two lengths of spotted bindings (I love spotty bindings), one was a pale blue with white spots, the other a turquoise with yellow spots). When I sewed them together they went all around the quilt with about 8" to spare! Perfect. ............... Guess where the spare 8" is?

• The Perle Cotton was also from my stash, a bright turquoise variegated one.  Almost finished it on this quilt but a little left for a future small project.
• The batting was a leftover piece which, when I sorted out my stash cupboard earlier this year, I had measured and pinned on a label with the dimensions.  Very useful when I looked through my batting pieces and found this piece which was exactly the right size!
• Embroidery threads used for blanket stitching the Freckles were all from stash.

The only new fabric in this quilt is the blue background which I bought at the Festival of Quilts in August this year. About 6 GBP per metre.  Got a small bit left to use for framing Crumb blocks or using in a future Strip Quilt, perhaps.

So, a small baby quilt, it measures 30" square.  Ready for the next baby boy.  I know of three babies expected between December and mid April so perhaps this little Freckles quilt will find a home with one of them.

A Close up of some of the Freckles and stitching:

 

And, finally, the backing and hand quilting:

 

A few stats about my finished quilts so far this year:

• 14 finished quilts, 4 of them UFOs
• 8 of the 14 gifted so far: 4 are now in New Zealand, 1 in Germany and 3 here in the UK.

Isn't is lovely to have lots of scraps to use up, whether they are fabric, batting, embroidery threads, bindings or Perle Cotton!

Linking up with Clare's Maybush Studio Brit Linky Thursday blog.