Tag Archives: quanket

Can You Teal the Love

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Donation Blocks for Can You Teal the Love
May 2022

When Kate over at Tall Tales from Chiconia announced that she is making an Ovarian Cancer charity quilt this year – after a two year pandemic hiatus – I knew right away that I wanted to contribute to this quilt project. The last one I had participated in was Go Teal it on the Mountain, back in 2018. The theme this year is love, with hearts being the feature element in the blocks’ design. To keep things interesting, she expanded the colorway from teal (predominant) and ivory, to include pink (in small amounts) this year.

I knew right away that I wanted to represent these colors in a dove, using hearts for the wings. While the pink is not intended to represent breast cancer for this quilt, the teal and pink together is meaningful to me: my sister passed away late last year from breast cancer, and her sister-in-law passed away in early 2020 from ovarian cancer. How befitting that I could combine these two colors in a dove, a symbol of love.

The final quilt (shown below) was assembled by Kate and donated for The Trudy Crowley Foundation fund-raiser in September 2022, to help support the work of the newly-opened Trudy Crowley Center. The center provides a safe space, conference room, self-care and advice haven for those with ovarian cancer and their families.

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Bubblegum

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Bubblegum
May 2022

Here’s another quilt I made as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge that I will be sending to The Little Lambs Foundation in Utah. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

This quilt incorporates a lot of “pieces of the past”. The fussy cut zoo animal centers were from my 2014 quilt, Balancing Hippopotami. The pink polka dot fabric is some from my Granny that has been in my stash and has made numerous appearances in my quankets for several years now. Another blast-from-the-past fabric is the backing fabric. I repurposed a twin sheet that was from my daughter’s college dorm days. It was still in excellent condition, and worked and looked perfect for the backing.

I enjoy using pieces of fabric, that I’ve either inherited or previously used in quilting projects, in some small way in my current projects. It sometimes makes me nostalgic, and oftentimes fills me with many great memories while I sew.

Play Ball

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Play Ball
May 2022

I used this printed panel to make a quanket (quilt + blanket = quanket). It will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

While I typically tie the fleece-backed quankets I make, I decided to try something different with this one, and quilted it on my machine. I had tried quilting on a fleece-backed quilt years ago, but became frustrated when the fleece bunched, and looked a mess no matter how many pins I used to hold it in place. However, between then and now, I have discovered the wonders of basting adhesive, which I use for all my regular batted quilts. The spray worked great at holding the fleece flat and in place. I quilted baseballs and gloves in the maroon sections, and outlined the bats, the playing field and many of the other elements.

This will be going to the Little Lambs Foundation in Utah.

Sisterhood

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Sisterhood
April 2022

For this recently completed jeans quilt, I used my and my sister Cathi’s old worn jeans. I had been wanting to make a jeans quilt for some time, but hadn’t found any designs that interested me. I had seen one that was made similar to this, except the folded over piece had been radiused, resembling a cathedral block. I wanted a more modern look so left the folded piece squared off, and mitered the corners. Since the back, or inside, of used jeans can be quite plain looking, I used Annie’s Craft Store’s Magical Winter 5″ charm squares on the inside of the jeans fabric, under my folded over piece, and then topstitched the folded over piece using a decorative stitch.

I constructed the quilt by starting with 7″ squares cut from the legs of the jeans. For most of the jeans I had, 7″ was about the widest I could get making the most efficient use of the fabric. I then cut a 1″ square from each corner of the 7″ squares. I first joined the squares to create my rows, using a 1″ straight seam, sewing from cut corner to cut corner. Next, I attached the 5″ charms using temporary quilters spray adhesive. Once I had a row assembled, I would seam down the flap portion just along the edges that had already been sewn, using a decorative stitch.

When it came time to join the rows, I opted to create two panels since jeans fabric is heavy, as it made it much easier to manipulate through my machine when it came time to do the final stitching down of the folded over piece between each row. I mitered the corners as I worked down each seam stitching down the folded over pieces. I used one of my machine’s fancy embroidery stitches, hoping to allow the raw edges to fray some, but not too much. Once it was done, I ran it through the wash to begin the fraying process. Overall, I was quite happy with how this one turned out, and I think Cathi would have liked it too!

I had originally planned to donate this quilt, but have been having a difficult time this year in finding a location in my county to drop them off for the kids in foster care. As the year ticked by, and many attempts at reaching out to Family Services for the county met with no response, I decided perhaps it was the cosmos’ way of telling me that this quilt was not intended for donation, but instead, for my eldest sister Lynn. I gifted it to her for Christmas, and she was very touched — Sisterhood ❤

Bloom

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Bloom
March 2022

This quilt will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. This year, the challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter. She will begin the sign-up process soon, so if you’re interested in joining this year’s challenge, check out her blog.

The backing fabric, shown here, is a Mary Engelbreit design from 2001, and has been living in my stash for about ten years now. I think the fabric is super cute, but every time I considered using it in a quilt, I was not sure how to cut the fabric. The individual elements are so close to one another, that I was concerned that even fussy cutting it would lose too many aspects of the overall design. I finally figured that using it as a backing on a baby quilt was going to do it the most justice. The piecing on the front mainly uses scraps and small pieces from my stash, and the flower pot is done using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

Baby Quilts Up for Auction

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Scooter & Tod

I have donated these two recently finished scrappy quilts to my grandkids elementary school for a silent auction that will raise money for school programs. If you are interested in bidding on either of these baby quilts, you can bid on Scooter (airplane) here, and Tod (fox) here.

Each quilt measures 40″x40″ and is made from 100% cotton outer, with 80/20 cotton/poly batting, machine pieced and quilted.

The auction is open from March 11-19, 2022.

Scooter

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Scooter
January 2022

Every Spring, I try to participate in the Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts. This year I decided to get a jump start on making baby quilts for this great cause. Since I was working to deplete my scraps bins with my recent Tod quilt, I kept the momentum going and made these yellow and blue log cabin blocks with “mostly” scraps. I say “mostly” because I was being a bit too fussy about the colorway, and did go into my stash for some of the blues and yellows. I made the airplane using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

Why the name? Scooter was a super sweet pound puppy that my sister had year’s ago. While this isn’t a dog, I thought the airplane was super sweet, and it reminded me of my sister – she’ll know why.

This was donated to Friends of Short Avenue Elementary for a silent auction in March, 2022.

Tod

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Tod
January 2022

While putting away my holiday scraps, I found that my reds bin was close to exploding. So, time for a red scrappy quilt! I kept this baby quilt super simple, patchworking 2″ blocks. As for the fox, I found a coloring page online, and then enlarged the image to the size I wanted, and traced directly from my monitor. I know all you techies are cringing, yes, it’s probably not good form to trace off a monitor, but I try to press only ‘very, very lightly’ 🙂 Typically, I either trace using my monitor, or against a window… of course, during daytime for using the window 😂 I made the fox using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

I often hear new quilters ask about the best way to store and manage their scraps. I hear some quilters suggest cutting into standard sizes before storing, and to only keep those pieces larger than 2″. My recommendation is to keep it all, and to not pre-cut it. Since I often dig into my scraps for appliqué projects, the size and irregularity of a piece is not a problem. I also enjoy the crumb block technique, which uses not only irregular shapes, but also very small pieces. Lastly, I sort scraps by color and use photo boxes to keep them in. This way, when the lid no longer wants to stay properly on the box, I know it’s time to do a scrappy quilt! If you are needing ideas for a scrappy quilt, check out Quilting is more fun than Housework’s blog.

Quilting is more fun than Housework

This was donated to Friends of Short Avenue Elementary for a silent auction in March, 2022.

Traveller

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Traveller
January 2022

I’ve been wanting to make a Wanderer’s Wife quilt for awhile and when I came across these jelly rolls, I knew they would be perfect for this project. Part of wanting to do this quilt was the desire to use up some of my orphan blocks. As it turned out, the blocks I used are about half new and half orphan blocks. It does not have as many blocks as some Wanderer’s Wife quilts I’ve seen, but I like its simplicity.

I like being able to repurpose, and I really like how this quilt pattern enables reusing scraps and orphan blocks. The jelly rolls were the only new fabric used, while the blocks that were newly pieced used scraps. I made this as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing and tying it.

When I had added this quilt to my ‘to do’ list a few year’s back, I knew it by the name Gypsy Wife quilt. Since that time, it has been renamed to Wanderer’s Wife. There is excellent information about the history and current Romani and Traveller human rights crisis here.

While I had intended this quanket to be donated to a foster child, sometimes life just has different plans. In mid-2022, my connection to CPS sort of just dried up. The facility I had been dropping my quilts off to, closed. I left many messages for my contacts with CPS, to no avail. So, the quilts were just sitting, waiting to find a home.

In early 2023, my Dad was admitted to the ER. It’s a long story. Anyways, Joe was Dad’s room mate. I really enjoyed my time hanging out with Joe while visiting my Dad in the hospital. Joe’s sister Gayle and his son Daniel, were so wonderful, and made the time in the hospital much more bearable. Daniel was always such a huge help with my Dad, when the nurses were otherwise occupied. I miss you Joe, and I hope you, Gayle and Daniel find peace and strength in your journey through life.

H♥me

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H♥me
November 2021

My nephew Joe is getting married today, to his love, and best friend, Bailey. The name H♥me is meaningful to them, hence the name.

Home is where the heart is. (Bailey)

You are my home. (Joe)

I hope through the years they become even better friends and share every possible kind of happiness life can bring.

The majority of the material used for this quilt is new, with a few pieces of the past mixed in. The pattern is called Geometric Slide, by Faith Jones.