My preemie personal challenge almost completed

A few more quilts completed from my quilting spree making small baby quilts for the Special Care Unit at the local hospital. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the last of the Quilts of Valour that I made during the winter months in Arizona.

Quilts for Calgary

This is copied from Cheryl's blog.   http://naptimequilter.blogspot.ca



Just a slab. One slab. Grab some scraps of fabric and sew them together.

I'm putting out a call to all my quilty friends out there. Maybe you can't spare the fabric or time or postage to send a whole quilt as we try to recover in Calgary and Southern Alberta. That's okay. But I bet you can make just one block. And the more of you that can make and send just one block, the more quilts we'll be able to donate. I will put all the blocks I get together into quilts. With an army of local long armers lined up to donate their time we will get some beds and hearts covered in no time.

Here are the basics:

Make a slab 15.5'' square. You can insert the white bit or not, that's your choice. Just aim to make your block in a single colour. Make as many as you like.

Our inspiration for these quilts is The Missing U quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts.

How do you make a slab? If you have the book, refer to the directions on pages 48-49. If you don't have the book let me summarize how to make a slab:

Take two pieces of fabric and sew them together. Do that a few more times. Then start sewing more pieces to those first pairs. Sew groups together. Add additional pieces of fabric as necessary to get up to your finished size. Start with small bits or big ones, it doesn't matter. Raid your scrap bins and go with what you've got.

Feel free to grab that top image and share it on your blogs/web-sites. Tell the world about how you made your slab. Link back to this post if you do.

When your block is done and you're ready to post it, send me a note and I will gladly send you my snail mail.

Thank-you so much for continuing to think of us here in Southern Alberta. Now that the emergency situation is behind us it is time to think about recovery. Quilts go a long way towards that.

*If you are interested in donating complete quilts or tops, make sure you check out this information.*

Iron Quilters challenge at the FVGQ quilt show

OK... the iron quilters challenge is over and we lost by one point because we decided to do quilt as you go and stitch in the ditch and apparently, that isn't real quilting compared to stipple quilting... but our workmanship was absolutely perfect right down to our binding. 

This was our finished project. 

The previous pictures were of the blocks we made to practise the piecing (the blue quilt) and the quilt we made in our test trial of can we make this quilt in under two hours (the pink one). 

Whew... that is over but was lots of fun and we were a great group.

Friday... happy weekend

We are going to have fun this weekend.  There is a reunion for a hockey team my dh used to play on for years... but a long time ago... will be good to catch up with some 'old' friends.

 

The first quilt is another one that I can't tell you anything about - but I will on Monday.  Some of you might be able to guess if you know me well enough to know one of my weekend activities.

 

 

 

These are some of the finished preemie quilts.  Quilted, bound and already delivered to our guild We Care.   Three are the same pattern but they are different.  Was an easy way to use up some 2½
 strips.  

These are seven quilts that were donated to Quilts of Valour by the quilters who winter in Mesa at Viewpoint.  They were quilted by a longarm quilter in Mesa who did a fabulous job.  Thank you very much to the quilters from Viewpoint.  These quilters are Canadian and are scattered across the country but the QOV rep brought them home to Chilliwack and delivered them to me on Wednesday evening.  I was thrilled with their efforts!  WOW. 
And, they also donated a lovely stack of pillowcases so all the quilts are folded, in their pillowcases and will be heading to CFB Chilliwack next week. 

Working towards my goal

I have a goal of making ten preemie quilts for the special care nursery at our local hospital and there seems to be a lot of wee baby boys being born and we know that dad's don't want a pink quilt for their little hero.  So, blue preemies it is!  The first quilt I can't you anything about .... yet.  But this time next week, I will explain the quilt.

Here is preemie #1.  Quilted and bound.  These finish up quickly once you have them made.

This quilt was a result of info from Sue in Colorado who showed us how to sew blocks in straight rows and then cut to create the diagonal effect.  I just had to add a couple of borders to get it to preemie size.
Preemie #2

 

 

 

And preemie #3.  These are all made from my stash of 'boy' fabrics though I did buy some accessorie/supporting role fabrics at a great sale at Countryfolk a few weeks ago.  Wish I had bought more blue for borders but am making what I have on hand work.

 

 

More to come, keep watching! 

 

Wow, one third of the way through the month

 

I haven't posted for awhile but let me catch you up on what I have been working on.  The first are some blocks that we have been playing with.  I can't tell you why yet but in a week or two, there will be more pictures and an explanation.  

 

I

I seem to have two of my grandsons EVERY weekend... which is ok except they are used to Grandma doing lots of special stuff with and for them and am running out of ideas and it is taking up all my weekends.  This was a batch of flubber slime which gave them a few hours of entertainment though a major mess to clean up once they were done. 

The guild I belong to donates quilts to the preemie ward, Special care nursery, at our local hospital and they are low on quilts for little boys so I decided to switch from Quilts of Valour and play with some ideas using my fabrics that I have on hand.  Some of these fabrics are ancient but have made quite a few tops.  Saw this idea online and a friend of mine is making these so good way to use strips.

Another idea using strips of various widths.

This is nothing to do with preemies but, saw this on a blog this morning and played with the idea. 

Another preemie quilt ready for quilting. I spent time today piecing a lot of my batting pieces together to get them large enough for these small quilts.

 I made three of this particular pattern.  Once you get going, it is easy to continue until you are bored.

 

 Seems quite bright but will be cheery for wee baby.

 

 

This was a funky way of using squares and stitching up a rectangle that was explained to me by an online quilting friend.  I will make more of these although it is hard to get the quilt to the required size of 30 x 36. 

 

I have all my backings and battings ready and next step will be to spend an afternoon layering and getting ready to quilt.