Small Pastel 9 Patch - Finish #4

Last night after dinner I was trying to organize my sewing space and put things away when I came across some charm squares leftover from various charm packs. I wanted to use them in something, but wasn't quite sure what. Then it hit me to turn them into a quilt for my quilt guild's local charity project. This year the guild has decided to provide security blankets, aka small quilts, to the Pee Dee Coalition for abused children.
I decided to cut these charm squares in to smaller 2.5 inch squares.

Within 20 minutes I had a new stack of squares.

Not long after that I made 12 small nine patch blocks, surrounded them in white sashing, and added a bright yellow border. And with that I had myself a new quilt top completed before bed time. I even had time to baste it and do half the quilting before hitting the hay.

This morning I finished the quilting and added the binding. It is ready to turn in Thursday. I am excited about that as I was unable to attend the work day this month where the guild had set aside time to make as many small quilts as they could. I am glad that I can still participate and bring in a small quilt for the Pee Dee Coalition.  

 The quilt measures approximately 29 x 37.

 It took me about 2.5 hours to quilt this little quilt.  

Nothing too fancy, just some stitch in the ditch, some swirls, and arcs.

It was fun to work with these fabrics.
I hope it will bring some happiness into the life of the person who receives it.

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60 Nine Patches

 I finished cutting up all the shirts except the two black ones and one white one.  I am not sure what to do with those two yet.  Perhaps I can use them for shashing if there is enough.  Out of the other 9 shirts I cut a bunch of 3.5 and 4.5 squares.  I took the smaller squares and made 60 nine patch blocks.  These will make two different quilts.  But I can't decide if I want to shash them with either white or black.  So I took a photo of them with both backgrounds to get a feel for what each one would look like.  Seeing them side by side I am leaning towards the black.  But my hubby said he thinks black is too dark so I am still on the fence.

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Purple Quilt Finished

My cat finally got off my purple quilt and I was able to finish it up.  :)

Actually I quilted a little bit on it every day over the past two weeks.  I have spent most of my craft time quilting for others lately, but I always make sure to set aside a few minutes each day (sometimes only 15) to work on something of my own.  Thanks to those spurts of time set aside I now have a finish of my own.

I wasn't sure what to put in the big purple border squares so I decided to go with feathers.  

You can never go wrong with feathers right?

In the purple diamonds between the nine patches I tried one of Leah Day's Free Motion Designs called Feathered Hearts.  You can see them pretty good from the back of the quilt.  They are a little more dense than the rest of the quilt, but they were fun to do and great practice.

I have a couple more client quilts and a Citizen Sam quilt waiting there turn on the machine so I will better back to those.    

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I won a Ribbon!!

I won a red ribbon for "Best Use of Theme" at my guilds Quilt Challenge Show!  The theme this year was "9 Patch". For my entry I finished up the 9 patch quilt from the quilt along I started over at Amanda Jean's blog in the summer of '09.  I actually finished the quilt at the beginning of May this year, but I didn't want to post a photo of it till it was revealed at the show today. All the quilts were revealed this morning as part of our June guild meeting and awards were handed out at the end of the meeting.  I was really surprised when they called my name out.  There were lots of fancy quilts there and I really didn't think my quilt would place at all.

All the quilts will hang in the Hartsville, SC Museum for the summer so if you are in town, stop by the museum to see them in person.

Finished the 9 Patches

This morning I finished up all the 9 patches for the shirt quilt I am working on.

I will have to sew them to the sashing later on tonight though, because right now I am off to a matinée to see a pirate movie with the kids and after that I plan on hitting the craft stores for their Memorial Day Weekend Sales.  Hope I find some good loot.  :)

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Quilt Guild Projects

This year my quilt guild is doing community service projects for Citizen Sam as well as the local hospitals in our area.  To help get us inspired for these projects, one of our guild members offered her orphan blocks and UFOs to others.  She said if someone would put the tops together she would quilt them.  So I took her 12 white/pink nine patch blocks plus the leftover scraps and told her I would come up with something.  She told us we could do what ever we wanted and that we would probably have to add our own fabrics to get a completed top.  I ended up adding a muted yellow star fabric that matched the flowers in one of the pink fabrics and made the blocks bigger. Then I used her pink leftovers to make a scrappy border.  Here is what I ended up with.  It has already been given back and I can't wait to see how she quilts it.

I am excited to help out for these projects and by sharing the work, my guild will be able to get many quilts made for our community this year.

70 Nine Patches

Today I finished my last nine patch for the One A Day quilt along that AmandaJean posted on her blog. She started it at the end of April and July 5th would have been the last day to finish, that is if you sewed one nine patch a day.

Well, I read her post on the first day that this quilt along was announced, and even admired the quilt that sparked the inspiration for this particular quilt along, but I didn't even think about playing along. As the days and weeks past, I kept seeing other bloggers and AmandaJean post their progress on their blocks and I kept staring at the finished quilt. And the more and more I stared at it, I decided I wanted one of my own. So on day 42 of the quilt along I decided to join in on the fun. It wasn't really a block a day for me though. Some days I did 10 blocks a day, some days I did 5, and some days I didn't get to make any. But today I made one block and it was the last block I needed to finish all 70 blocks. Now I just need to cut the sashing, sew the top together, baste it, and then quilt it. That is the easy part... yeah right... ;) but since I am so excited to finish this quilt, I am hoping the rest of the project will go quick. I sure do hope all my scrappy blocks play well together.