charity quilting part 2

So earlier I mentioned about the doll quilts.

The 8 I was trying to get done before Thursday are done!

Turned in Thursday.

They're all sorts of sizes - just whatever fabrics I had.  Hopefully the dolls will also vary in size so the quilts will all be useful.  

This project started out as a bag of scraps my sister-in-law gave me a LONG time ago to be donated to my guild for charity stuff.  I'd previously donated a bag of her scraps and, at the time, I thought they were well-received, so I took the second bag.

But, before I'd remembered the bag (sitting upstairs) to take to donate, there was a comment made about how they'd finally gotten though all the "little bits" someone had donated previously.

This did not please me.  I've gotten "kits" cut by a gal in the guild who chops big pieces up into smaller pieces to create these "kits" for donation quilts.  The purpose of her doing this is to get us to the sewing part faster, hoping we can make a few more donation quilts than before.  And to coordinate stuff and make hopefully prettier quilts.

While I understand that having bigger pieces to work with is desirable, little pieces count as well.  And I knew the bag my sister-in-law had donated contained little pieces.  So I didn't donate the bag.  I waited.  I'm not sure for what, but I did.

I still had the bag when the gal in my guild mentioned about the doll quilts for the local charity a few weeks back.  So I lugged the trash bag (I'm not kidding) that was more than half-full to my weekend sewing Saturday and dumped it on the table and started sorting.  (THAT should have been a photo!)  Piles of fabrics that went together, piles of like colors, bigger pieces that could be backs into a pile...

...and blocks.  And so I started sewing.  Some needed just another row, others needed some math, but by the time Sunday was over (I opted to go back for a second day), I had 10 tops.  Yes, 10.

And then I came home.  The following Thursday, a bag of smaller batting pieces, left over from trimming off larger charity quilts, was offered up for "whatever" (not necessarily charity work) at our meeting.  I took it.  PERFECT for doll quilts, even if I had to piece some in there.

That weekend (was it just last weekend?  really?), my hubby was out of town for work, so I decided to get working on these.  First I went looking for a holiday flannel to go on the back of the last one in the line of photos.  In the meantime, I found enough flannel to back ALL 10 of the quilts.  And I still hadn't found the holiday flannel.  (I did find it an use it...eventually.)  My stash of flannel is greatly depleted, but that's okay.  I don't really like using it for much more than backs anyways.

Not huge pieces, but with a little piecing, good enough for backs.  But no way were these going to go on the longarm.  The amount of extra fabric needed for backs is ridiculous when you have a quilt this small, so it was off to the store to buy my first ever can of spray baste!

By Saturday evening, I'd basted 8 and quilted 7.  By Sunday evening, I'd basted, quilted and made and sewn down binding on all 8.  I only had the hand-sewing portion of binding to go.  And I even dug through my bag of leftover binding and diminished that in the process, too!

The quilting isn't great, as my "walking" foot has a bit of a limp when the shaft holding the foot on hangs up on a thick seam, but since these are likely to be used and abused, they don't need to be showpieces.

There is still a LOT of fabric in the bag, but it's sorted now and does look smaller, but I'm not sure if that's just my wishful thinking or not.  I'm sure there will be other rounds of projects to come from this, but I'm not sure if it will be this year.  I still have two that are a little larger (and backing I think that is large enough to use on the longarm) to finish, but they'll go to the local homeless and domestic abuse shelter, so there's a less demanding deadline for those.

And though I didn't donate the fabric, I AM using it for charity quilts - just a little different route and I'm not complaining about the little bits.  For projects like those above, they were often just what I needed!

But this weekend, I ended up going to a quilt show I hadn't planned on going to.  A last-minute decision on a rainy Saturday, and I found a dinosaur panel and now I'm sidetracked.  Though they had only kits for the quilt they'd made for the show, I made a little side trip on the way home to get two panels and some fabric for backing two quilts for two nephews for Christmas.  The link above also shows the quilt they'd put together for the booth and I decided I'd do something simpler with the panels.  And then my brain started working...I'm not sure if my idea is simpler, but I like it better.  I'll share it soon, but it includes "dinosaur teeth" and "dinosaur tracks"...

Happy quilting,

Katie