charity quilting

I've been meaning to post about these for a while, but it's been quite a week around here.  I'm glad it's weekend and have some fun stuff planned.

But first, the charity quilting!

My local quilt group makes quilts for local charities.  Fabrics are donated and "stashed" and a few members work to match things up and cut kits.  I showed a bit of the finished top with the kit I took a few weeks ago, but it's now a finished quilt!

That's my 6-foot hubby behind there holding it up, so you can see it's a good size.  And the fabrics aren't so bad from a bit of a distance.  :)

This quilt will be going to a local shelter that provides a place for people escaping domestic violence.  When you leave with nothing but the clothes on your back, I can imagine a homemade quilt would seem like a luxury and I feel honored to be a part of this program.  I see many more quilts of this nature in my future!

Next up is a quilt the whole group is working on together that will be raffled as a fund-raiser for the local library.  The library is having to cut hours and all sorts of things because funding just isn't there.  So we're making a quilt that will take a whole year to raffle.  I really hope it brings in a good amount because I know how raffle quilts can go...

It will be a Double Irish Chain pattern, but the color placement makes it look a bit different.  (Sorry, no photo yet!)  The first step was to sew strip sets (already cut and placed in bags for kits).  After a lecture on 1/4" seams, I decided maybe this wasn't the project for me.  (Yep, it was THAT kind of lecture.)  But...the next step was sewing sections cut from those strips sets and I was asked to participate.  So of course, I volunteered for two kits.  (Would you expect anything else?)  They didn't have enough volunteers, so I got two.

Now I know you're probably scratching your heads, thinking I've sewn something wrong, but I haven't.  The two colors weave in and out of each other and there's about 12 different blocks.  It will all work - I have faith!

I think the remainder of the sewing will fall on the coordinator, but there is also a border with appliqued leaves, which you all know I'll probably volunteer to sew on at least 100 because I don't know the meaning of "no"!

Thankfully there are a few members in the group with much more longarm experience than me, so I'm pretty confident that won't fall to me.  (Though the first quilt in the post did.)

As for this weekend, my mom is headed down as I type to do a few quilty things, then we have a cookout at the hubby's aunt's house to celebrate the local festival in their small town: Gizzard Fest (yep, chicken gizzards...a local restaurant was actually on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives for them, but we've known about them for much longer than that...no, I won't eat them).  After that, we're heading to a friend's place for another cookout to celebrate a 50th birthday!  And Sunday (yep, that's all today), I'm heading to my parents to raid my mom's fabrics stash to get going on my June UFO.

So I suppose I'd better enjoy sitting here typing while I can because I'm not sure how much more sitting I'll be doing the rest of the weekend!  But it's a GOOD weekend.  And beautiful weather to boot.

Happy quilting,

Katie