Sew Sunshine

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recently I was asked to demo at our local guilds sew day, how to make some quilts quickly for charity. I have been making kids quilts mostly over the years at a reasonable pace, a few here and a few there. Then I got evolved in my church sewing group several years ago. That group makes bed rolls for homeless clients by using all kinds of textiles like drapery, discarded bedding sheets and blankets, canvas, fleece etc. But we also had boxes and boxes of donated cotton fabrics. Old fashioned calicos from the 80's and some kids prints. In order to work in our area freely something at to be done to empty some of the boxes. I started by cutting squares and sewing the cottons with denim squares (we also have still, boxes and boxes of donated denim jeans). Simply sewn and then layered with flannel and backed and tied. I am a quilter though and so I have made many quilts in various patterns so that I could quilt them...

Over the years I have experimented with QAYG quilts. I really love when you can make something from ALL the scraps. I used scrap fabrics, scrap batting  and use up thread colors in bobbins that I don't normally use up.  ( I actually like using up the bobbin threads from other machine too as I never have the color I need and never have empty bobbins so...?) I ..........LOVE doing this! All of it. I am so satisfied using up batting bits as my foundations. Strips, squares...they all work. This block was a happy accident. I had no idea how it was going to come together and I made more blocks than I used so ya know...another quilt probably ...hahaha Me trying to use the remote..haha If you can't laugh at yourself..right? Better..haha I had this one done the day I did the quilt parade last week.  HERE  are the ones from last week Speaking of using scraps, I asked a few guild members if they had batting strips they didn't know what to do with.  I scored a few bags of s...

Here is my 2nd annual finish for Hands 2 Help hosted this year by Mari @  The Academic Quilter This is the Scrappy 4 squares quilt I came up with. It is one of 2 quilts I am sending to my choice of charity For more info on joining in or just to see how this works you can check out the link above to The Academic Quilter.  More about my process on making the scrappy 4 squares below.  Here is the block I played with: I showed some playing around with it in a previous post. I started with a color block in the center. In this case mine were 6". I then sewed random strips of fabric together. I tried to make sure they were wide enough to cut approximately 2 -2.5" strips out of each slab of fabric strips.  I used EQ to play a layout.  In real life this was pretty scrappy overload. I think it would have been fine but I wanted it to be a tiny bit bigger. So that is why I added the color strips in the center. I think it is okay and it made the finished quilt 42" x 42"...

67 x 72 pattern by Tony Jacobson Quilted by my friend Steph Jacobson I really wanted to give a quilt to a 'Hometown Hero' as part of Sarah's quilt drive for  Hands to Help 2021  (@ confessions of a fabric addict) I made a baby quilt for Little Lambs which you can see  HERE . My mission now was to figure out how to find a hero for this quilt.  Before Covid in my lqg I was assigned a quilt partner, sort of a mentor/mentee kind of thing. I knew my partner worked at a local hospital and so I reached out to her to see if she knew someone on staff that needed a little love and comfort, not to mention a pat on the back for tireless work well done! Well she thought of someone right away.    My lovely quilt partner Jean on the L and our honoree on the right, Nina Redl the hospital chaplain.  Nina worked throughout covid last year going from patient to patient attending to their families and coordinating resources for communication on ipads or whatever was neede...

I joined the  New Blogger Blog Hop 2013 ?  (Check it out, I think my answers are still the same as what I wrote about then) Wow that seems so long ago.  Guess what? I still love blogging about what I am doing creatively. This year it has been kind of a bumpy road getting back into quilting. I never stopped but had many delays last year because my husband and I decided to remodel our kitchen and dining area ourselves.  This year I have been working on catching up with many outreach and charity projects.  I planned a project for our local National Quilting Day Celebration at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.  Two quilts were made and donated to the local Child Advocacy Center.  Read more here about  Love of every day things .  I taught a class to help guild members be more confident with using the Quick Curve Ruler made by  Sew Kind of Wonderful This quilt made by members of the classes and  the q...