Three quilts for Charity

 

These quilts are ready to go and when my kids are not sick we are going over to our local women's shelter to deliver them with a card talking about how quilts are like love.  Here is the card I made.  It turned out pretty cute.

 

 

 

I think I started some of these quilts 2 or 3 years ago.  They have been a challenge in the fact that I was trying new techniques that I was not used to.  So let me tell you a little bit about these quilts.

 

The light green one was an experiment.  I think I bought the fabric over 5 years ago.  Then a couple years ago when we were making quilts for a Relief Society project I think I started it.  I wanted to try making blocks on a quilt.  The fabric is from my grandmother's stash.  After she died I was able to gather some of the fabric in hopes that one day I would make quilts like grandma.  Maybe one day I will but for now I am an amateur.  After piecing the top together I experimented with a quilting technique.  I was trying to use many of the fancy stitches on my machine and just played around with it.  I decided to do some free motion quilting but I didn't like doing it with my machine.  And so there it set for a couple years waiting for me to finish.  Finally I decided it needed to be done and so I figured out that Kirsten's sewing machine has a free motion foot and it fits on my machine.  So I was able to free motion the squares that were green.  It turned out okay.  I have a long way to go on my free motion quilting but it is kind of cute and has a unique look to it.  I added a premade binding and it turned out okay.

 

 

For these two quilts I used a couple different techniques.  I sometimes watch the show Fon's and Porter on PBS.  I love the idea of making a quilt but lack the confidence to do more then very simple quilts.  Years ago I used a technique from the Bend the Rules sewing Book and made a couple lap quilts by piecing together strips.  But as I was watching the show Fon's and Porter I saw them demonstrate a quilt made on the serger.  The Serger Ruffle Quilt seemed a fairly easy way to make a quilt and so I thought I would make these quilts into that.  It is fairly straight forward but I found there were a couple problems with quilting with the serger.  Mainly that you are going over 6 layers of fabric and batting.  My machine did it fine but I found that sometimes I would not catch one layer.

 

 

So I ended up having to modify how I did it.  After I would serge one layer I would have to cut the layers to match up all three layers before adding the next layer. 

 

 

I then would move the new piece on top over about a 1/4 of an inch to insure that it would get sewn into the seam.  After that I picked up all of the fabric into the seam and didn't have problems. 

 

 It took a little longer then I expected but they turned out pretty and cute.  Of course I love the pink and purple one but the purple and green one has grown on me. 

For binding the quilt I found a tutorial that showed you how to bind it all on the sewing machine. The tutorial is here Quilt Binding tutorial.  That saved me hours of time that I would have to sew it by hand.  I think it turned out pretty nice too.
I found somewhere where someone had wound their binding onto an old thread spool.

  I liked the idea and I was even able to put it on my second thread holder while I was adding it to the quilt.  It moved smoothly and made it easy to put on.  Just one of those things that made the binding part easier.  I cut all my binding from scraps.  I like using scraps for binding, it adds color and fun to the binding.

Hope you enjoy and I hope those at the shelter can feel the love I put in to these blankets.

Kindness Inspires Kindness

 

One of my goals for this year is to do 12 Acts of Kindness in 12 Months.  My plan is to do one act of kindness each month.  It seems like a doable thing.  It was all inspired by a post I read on the blog Power of Moms, the specific post was a podcast about a lady named Amy who decided that for her 40th birthday she would do 40 acts of kindness.  After I read the post I WANTED to do this.  But I had passed my 40th birthday and I wasn't sure if I could do 40 acts of kindness in one year so I put it down to my size - 12 in 12 months.  That meant I only needed to do one act of kindness each month.  That seemed doable and I was off. 

 

I had just reorganized my craftroom and found 3 quilts in various stages of being done and so I set about to get all 3 done and donate to my local women's shelter.  BUT time was working against me and the end of January was fast approaching.  I felt frustrated and unsure if I really wanted to do this.  Then an opportunity fell in my lap.

 

A young girl at our church has heterotaxy syndrome among other numerous problems.  A fund has been set up in her name to help the family to pay for the many hospital bills that occur monthly.  If you want to read more or contribute to her family here is a link to her website - Helping Hallie

I decided that I would make my Act of Kindness to make a donation to her fund.  It wasn't much but it was a start to my 12 acts of kindness.

 

 

12 Acts of Kindness

 

JAN: Donation to Helping Hallie

 

FEB:  I was able to complete all three quilts for the local women's shelter.  Now I just need to make an appointment or find out when I can deliver them.  I will show you the quilts and give you some of the info about how they were made in a follow-up post.  I had some good times and some struggles getting them done.

 

 

MARCH:  My plan for March is to deliver to an assisted living center fabric flowers for Easter.  I am hoping to make somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 flowers.  I am going to ask my craft group to help and hope that we can take them before Easter with my family and any others that may want to come to the residents.  I will make them with alligator clips so there is no worry about pinning the residents. 

This was going to happen in April and then I realized that Easter is the last Sunday in March again.  Ugh, I guess I will work hard to get this done.  Now I am done with the quilts, I should have plenty of time.  (Said with a laugh.)

Here is a collage of the type of flowers I want to take.  Really I don't care which kind and actually think it might be fun to make different kinds.  I have fabric I can make some of these with and hope that I can make many of them without purchasing much extra fabric.

Pinterest link

 



 

April:  For April I am going to walk a 5K for charity.  Our county has a race called the Human Race.  It is where runners or walkers can support any local charity.  I have decided that I want to try and raise $360 dollars for the West Suburban Community Pantry.  Why $360?  Well for $360 they can buy a ton of food.  So that is the number that came to my head.  If you would like to help by donating a little bit you can either use my paypal account under amy (dot) kirstensmom (at) gmail (dot) com or send me a message for my address.  Every little bit counts.

Now I hope that I can find other acts of kindness I can do through out the year and hope that by being kind I can inspire kindness in my family and in the community.

MIA Blogger

Sometimes life is just crazy.  I have a couple of things I have been working on lately but I need to finish them up before I can post them, but I realized the other day that I did not show you my creation for my daughter's baptism.  In our church the children are give the opportunity at the age of 8 to choose whether or not they want to be baptized.  Our daughter Kirsten made the decision and on December 29th she baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).  I was watching Martha's Sewing Room one day and a guest showed how to make beautiful designs on a sheer material with the serger.  (I can't find the link, sorry.)  I knew right then that I was going to make Kirsten's dress that way.  So here is a picture of my beautiful daughter in her dress.

I created the cross work on my serger on to a sheer organza material and then lined with the white satin fabric.  It was a lot of stress.  I did the serging first before I cut the pattern out.  I am grateful to my mother that did all the handiwork on it and helped me figure out the zipper.  Kirsten just radiated and the dress was the finishing touch.

After the baptism we had a lunch at our house.  It was crazy with over 30 people in my little house but it was a lot of fun.  I had found this beautiful dress on Pinterest and knew that I needed to make it for Kirsten's baptism luncheon.  It was fairly easy once you figured out the rhythm out of how to make the flowers.  I used my largest star in my pastry set and went to work.  To make the Buttercream recipe more white I just used half the butter it called for and substituted the shortening for the butter and used clear vanilla from Wilton.  It turned out adorable.  I sprinkled a little bit of white sugar crystals on top to make it "shine" and bought some pearls from the Wilton store for the waistband.

So much fun!  I love getting things together for a party.  We had a great time and enjoyed having friends who could share this special day with us.