Hands2Help 2020

For the 10th year, I am joining the Hands2Help Comfort Quilt Challenge.  You an read about all the great charities to choose from this year at Confessions of a Fabric Addict .  Sarah started and has hosted this great quilt drive for all 10 years: she is an amazing person!

Today is May 19th, I see that I started this post on March 12th, just before my world went to hell in a handbasket: Corona, I trumped you March 26th, with the death of my husband and my breast cancer mastectomy surgery on the very same day!

I have always said that quilting was my therapy and it continues to be my therapy.

I have also put my quilting aside, made and donated over a hundred masks.

In addition, my therapy consisted of defrosting the garage deep-freezer, cleaning out the entire garage, painting the spare bedroom, repeatedly mowing the lawn, planting the garden, setting up my drip system for my deck plants and getting my planters full of colorful flowers for summer.

Here is a stack of 8 Comfort Quilts for Hands 2 Help 2020 Quilts.

Boxed and will be ready to ship to Quilts of Compassion as soon as they are accepting deliveries.

 

 Ready to ship to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo.

These remaining 4 baby quilts will all be shipped to Little Lambs Foundation.

 

H2H 2019 #2

One more Hands 2 Help quilt finished and ready to send to Mercyful Quilts. Mercyful Quilts give quilts to people as they approach the end of life. Later the quilt goes with the family. I found these 12 purple blocks in a bag of fabrics I bought at a garage sale last summer. I think it is fitting that these blocks were made by a lady who was selling all her sewing supplies so she could enter an assisted living center. I think she might be pleased to know that her efforts are being passed along to another person in need of a "Quilty Hug."

Please visit Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict to see all the details and all the wonderful quilts that others have made for this great charity quilt challenge.

 This buttery yellow actually matched the yellow pansies on this print.

Lots of freehand quilting hides any perfections in the blocks.

This yummy flannel backing has violets and wild roses.

Done! Jeweled Arkansas Crossroad

My April "One Monthly Goal" is finished.

My goal was just to get the top pieced, but cold rainy weather here in Ohio gave me more time to sew and quilt...

...so I quilted it and it's bound! 

Pieced entirely from my scrap bins.

Because I needed to balance the open quilting in the colored X blocks, the neutral areas are done with a freehand wreath with large fluffy, open, bump-back feathers. 

I wanted to go for a "faceted" jewel look in the x blocks.

Sew Fine thread: light grey on all the colored areas and beige on the neutrals.  Grey in the bobbin for both.

I found a 1/2" thick 100% poly batting leftover scrap on my shelf from several years ago that was the perfect size.

As I browsed through my backings, I just happened to have plenty of this purple!

When I got to the binding I auditioned several colors, purple like the backing, orange, green, neutral, blue.....Nothing was working!  I just didn't want to break up the effect of the colored sections of the border. 

So, here's what happened:

I have never pieced a binding like this before, but it didn't turn out too bad.

Here is the quilt before and after the binding--

It melts right into the colored piecing.

I always machine bind my quilts....and I always stitch it to the back and then bring the binding to the front to top-stitch.  However, I didn't think I could do that and still match the colors.

So, I top stitched from the back.

Here's how I do it.

I fold the binding so the edge just matches up the row of stitching where I attached it to the other side.

 

With the fold exactly on the stitched row, I move the needle over one space to the right and guide the fold along the left inside of my presser foot.  Bu moving the needle over you are assured of getting a nice even topstitch on both sides.  I have to use my old Bernina 153 because  I can't override the computer on my 820 to let me move the needle over with the #37 foot. 

I hold it nice and flat with my seam ripper as I sew.

 You can easily make perfect corners too.

Binding for a lap sized quilt like this takes about 45 min to cut, stitch, fold and press and attach--front and back.

This one took about 3 hours because of the piecing, fitting the next color after turning the corner, stitching, turning the corner and stopping to attach the next color... I don't recommend it but I love it for this quilt. 

Hard to believe these 2 quilts were made from the same block pattern--just reversing the color and the neutral

. 

 Arkansas Crossroads

I love them both!

They were both pieced entirely from my scrap bins.
In case you missed the first one you can read about it here:
 Not Afraid of Scrappy Quilts


Linking up with:
 April One Monthly Goal
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Lets Bee Social
Oh Scrap!

Jeweled Arkansas Crossroad

Quilting makes all the difference!

Yes!  I found this purple backing fabric in my stash. 

In order to reach all the corners of this neutral space, I decided to quilt a freehand feathered wreath with bump back feathers. I needed a center, but my smallest circle ruler was too large, so I used this container to draw in a circle and then stitched around the line.

The only SID is along the border, I want to make the bright colors look like faceted jewels....love how it's turning out.

linking up with:

Moving it Forward

Oh Scrap!

Monday Making

April-One Monthly Goal

My OMG for April is complete.

  The final seam was pressed last night.

  

Scrappy Arkansas Crossroads  61x77  (weird size, I know...)
I was inspired by a similar quilt on Pinterest, by Victoriana Quilt Designs.

Now that I am Not Afraid of Scrappy Quilts, my goal for 2018 is to make as many different quilts as I can, using up as many of my scraps as possible.

 Every inch of this quilt top came from these scrap bins.

For future quilts, I also plan to "shop" from my fat quarter and yardage stash.

 ...and extra yardage for backings.

When tasked to use up what is available one is forced to think in creative ways that might not have occurred otherwise.

The colored X blocks were pretty slow to sew, as each one required a layout: then piecing, pressing, matching, sewing, pressing, etc. Mind numbing.

However, the alternate neutral 16 patch blocks were a no-brainier chain piece project.

I even kept a pile of neutral patches by my side and used them as leaders and enders, so I was able to piece several neutral blocks while I was sewing the X blocks.

Notice the purple strip markings on my machine?  Those are Q Tools by Marci Baker.  I have used these for about 7 years and can't sew without them.  The right one is 1/4 inch, the left one is lined up with the needle.  This way I can sew half square triangles without ever marking them.  Learn how I use them here:

Q Tools 

It was strange to make, I just picked a couple of colors for the first block and then it grew outward from there,

When I got the blocks all done and on the design wall, I decided to add the border to the blocks and then sew the rows.

There were so many seams, I didn't want the edges to all come apart if I handled the entire top too much.  I also stay-stitched all the border edges as I went.

So, since my 2018 goal is to use up my scraps; as I stitched the rows together and assembled the quilt top, I started feeding through (leaders and enders) to use up the leftover 2.5" pieces for my next quilt.

I pulled a yard of black (so dang tired of neutral) and cut up some 2.5" squares to add to my leftover bright colors to start the next project.

Can't wait to see where this takes me...😍

Linking up with

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

and

Finish it up Friday