Sunday, May 22, 2016

Hands 2 Help

Well, this is embarrassing!  Apparently I haven't blogged at all since last year's Hands 2 Help Reveal.  I've been here, and I've been quilting, but I guess I just haven't told all of you about it!  I'll try to do better in 2016.

Anyway, on to the Hands 2 Help reveal!  It was a long winter, and I enjoyed a lot of time in my sewing room and had more time to devote to charity quilting.   One of the advantages of living in Wisconsin, I guess.

Last year, in the drawing for the prizes after our reveal, I was lucky to be the winner of a jelly roll of fabric from a line called What's Bugging You.  It was a line of very cute bright bug fabrics, along with black and white bug fabrics.  I separated them out, added some other fabrics and made two quilts from this jelly roll.

This is the quilt from the bright fabrics in the line.  I added some white squares and the blue print, and ended up with a bright and cheerful quilt.  I don't have a pattern name for this quilt; I saw it on Pinterest and made up my own measurements.  It's quilted with a flowery-type design.

This is the bug print in the black and white strips.  Aren't the bugs cute?  I made 9-patches of the black and white prints, and set them with this orange dot fabric.

This is the final quilt.  No pattern for this one, either; it's just 9-patches with alternate squares and setting triangles.  I had to get a little creative with this one to get it big enough!  I machine quilted it with  meanders and loops.  Both these quilts ended up about 48" x 56", a good lap size, and went to Happy Chemo.

I'm a big fan of Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville, and have used her ideas for lots of leader and ender blocks.  I had a large stack of nine-patches made from 2" squares, and decided to use Bonnie's Tumalo Trail pattern (from one of her books) to make a couple more Hands 2 Help quilts.
 This is first one - a fun scrap quilt with lots of reds.  This might make a good Christmas quilt for someone.  It is meander quilted.
This is the second one - less red and more blues and greens. This one I "custom quilted" with a feather-type design in the half-square triangles and other motifs that fit the squares and borders.    These quilts were about 56" x 72", so also good lap size.  Both of these quilts went to Covered In Love and will hopefully bring some comfort to the recipients.

So, the final tally is four quilts for Hands 2 Help this year!  All four quilts were mailed out a couple weeks ago and have arrived safely at their destinations.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's quilts again this year.  Thanks to Sarah for putting this project together for us!