Monthly Archives: June 2015

Don Diego

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charity quilt

Don Diego
June 2015

Don Diego is named after Center Veterinary Clinic’s clinic cat. The cute cat fabric came from a donation of scrap fabrics I had received from them a few months back. Their clinic cat Diego sounds like he is quite a rascal! In addition to their donated fabric, I used leftover scrap fabrics from a variety of prior quilt projects.

This is the 50th donation quanket I have made. I typically like to finish one girl and one boy quilt and then take them over to the County of Ventura, Children & Family Services, via the Children’s Services Auxiliary of Ventura County. With the completion of Mr. Blue Sky, Don Diego was donated in July 2015.

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Toodles

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quilt

Toodles
June 2015

We welcomed a new addition to the family this past March, our grand-nephew Dexter! I made this quilt for him, as a “welcome to the world” gift! I hope that he grows to love it, and that he wraps it around himself when he sees his first Shark’s game!

This is not a typical baby-sized quilt, but is much larger. I do this because the quilts I make for babies I want to be used as much as possible before they think that it is too “baby’ish”. Also, since we no longer put any loose things in the crib with a baby, the smaller baby quilts tend to have fewer occasions for getting used. The larger quilt is great for laying on the floor for babies to do tummy time and for playing with their toys, before they start crawling.

While most of the fabrics are new, I was able to incorporate some leftover fabric from Edith, Dexter’s paternal great-grandma into this Allison Harris’ (Cluck Cluck Sew) Off Track quilt design. I also incorporated the cute animals driving cars which I had used in my Twizzler Goes for a Ride quilt. When I made Reny’s quilt back in November, I reflected that I suspect that Edith is up in heaven enjoying all her wonderful great-grandsons, which now total five!

*Footnote: I wish the picture would have turned out better! The lighting is making it look saggy, which in person, it isn’t!

Around the Table

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charity quilt

Around the Table
June 2015

This is a framed squares quilt pattern. The center of each square came from a donation I received of a book of tablecloth samples. Carol reached out to me though my blog to let me know she had several tablecloth sample books that she would love to see used in a quilt. Thank you Carol for your donation!

The inspiration for the name was twofold: the first is obvious, that they were actually tablecloth samples. The second is perhaps not as obvious. As I sat sewing this quilt, I thought a lot about the many fond memories I have of gatherings around a table: Birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with family and friends; times spent when my two girls were little playing games at the table and now with them and their families playing games around the table! The name Around the Table just seemed right for this one.

The overall design was inspired by Melanie over at Catbird Quilt Studio. I came across Melanie’s blog last month, and love how she uses borders in her medallion quilts. This is the perfect technique when quilting predominately with scraps, as it allows a quilt to grow to the desired dimension with (somewhat) ease and beauty. I only had enough of the tablecloth pieces in the chosen color values to get me to roughly 35″x50″. So, I borrowed a page from Melanie and added a border! The finish size came in right around 4’x5′, which is the size I aim for when making quankets for kids. The frames around the tablecloth sample pieces were all scraps from previous projects, while the edge binding was a new piece. When done, there were over 70 different fabrics that went into this quilt!

I donated this quanket to Diana Jasany’s Girl Scout Gold Award project. You can follow Diana’s journey on her Facebook page. I am so thrilled to have found two kindred spirits over the past month who make quilts for foster kids: the fist being Nita who blogs at Because You Matter and now Diana!

Quilting is more fun than Housework