Hoots
May 2018

This is being donated to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids in Logan, Utah, as part of this year’s Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge. The Little Lambs Foundation for Kids provides comfort kits to children ages newborn to 17 years old who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelter or who have been hospitalized.

The Pieces of the Past fabric that I incorporated was the teal blue polka dot material which I had inherited from Granny. I suspect that she had originally used it to make similarly matching outfits for my sisters and I when we were kids since I have polka dot fabric in different colors in her fabric scraps. She would often make the same outfit for each of us just using a different color of the same fabric design. I always got pink 🙂

Go Dog Go
May 2018

I don’t often do panel quilts, and I don’t often have UFOs, but this one ticked off both these boxes for me. I had found this flannel panel a few years back and thought it was too cute to pass up! I also figured it would be a super quick project. Oh, how wrong I was!

From the start, this gave me grief. The panel had a strange wonkiness to its shape and was not a true rectangle. It was longer along its center top-to-bottom axis. I tried to compensate with the addition of the navy blue side borders, and adding tucks here and there, but this only further exacerbated the issue. I became so frustrated because I couldn’t figure out a way to correct the wonkiness that I put it away. This is slightly out of character for me since I am a full subscriber to a ‘just fix it’ mentality.

When I learned about this year’s Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge needing baby quilts for the Little Lambs Foundation for Kids, it energized me to pull out this UFO and get it done. I added a seam in the top of the center block, just below the traffic signal, which helped shorten the center length, allowing me to remove the previous tucks I had done in an attempt to fix the misshapen issues. And while upon final inspection it is not perfect from a sewing standpoint, I think its vivid colors and playful design are perfect for a newborn.

The Little Lambs Foundation for Kids in Logan, Utah, provides comfort kits to children ages newborn to 17 years old who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelter or who have been hospitalized.

Hooty
May 2018

The overall design for this one started with the colorful owl fabric that I used in the center-ish of the quilt. With the little owls being so close together, I decided that instead of cutting them to work into a block quilt, that they may do better in strips. I added the zig-zag rows to the top and bottom of the quilt, and felt it needed something unique to center the entire thing. I like all the various animal blocks that have become popular in recent years (porcupines, dogs, foxes, etc.), and have been itching to try one out. This seemed to be the perfect place to give it a go!

I think in my final analysis of the overall design, I realize that doing big stripe type quankets such as this present a challenge for tie placement. Also, while the owl block worked out ‘okay’, that I should have re-thunk the construction aspects of this particular stripe and block: the pink fabric did not want to lay nicely and having no place to tie across the center section became an issue. I tried to compensate by doing a running stitch above and below the pink center stripe which helped a little bit.

The Pieces of the Past fabric that I incorporated was the pink stripe material which I had inherited from Granny. From the design and feel of the fabric, I estimate that it was from the 1940’s-1950’s, and could have originally been bed sheets.

This is being donated to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids in Logan, Utah, as part of this year’s Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge. The Little Lambs Foundation for Kids provides comfort kits to children ages newborn to 17 years old who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelter or who have been hospitalized.