100 Quilts for Kids

This summer I made several baby sized quilts without a baby in my life to give one to!  Then when I was telling this to a friend, she suggested I donate one to the Baby Foundation's annual Silent Auction.  This is a local organization in my town which raises money for families who find themselves in tough situations after the birth of a baby with big medical needs.  So I am planning to donate this quilt, along with a basketful of baby supplies to this wonderful event.

Around the World Blog Hop

I was nominated by Tanya Quilts in CO to participate in the Around the World Blog Hop this week.   Thanks, Tanya!  It has been fun getting to know you through our shared love of quilting and both being teachers in Colorado.  I bet we could really have a conversation about that!  LOL!

What am I working on right now?
I spent a lot of time this summer sewing scrappy quilts out of my stash that were inspired by Quilting is more fun than Housework's Scrap-a-Palooza series.  That has been so fun, because I love scrappy quilts and feel a great sense of accomplishment making them out of my stash.  Here is my favorite:

I just started a jelly roll quilt called "Summer in the Park" based on a tutorial by Missouri Star Quilt Company, using a jelly roll of Into the Woods by Lella Boutique for Moda and a jelly roll of Kona Snow.

Not much progress to show on that yet, but I'm hoping it will be beautiful!  I love the pink, dark red, teal, and brown in that line of fabric!

How does your work differ from others?

Well, that is probably the hardest question to answer!  I get so much inspiration and so many ideas from the online quilting community.  On my iPad, I have saved at least 100 different tutorials of projects I want to try. I follow way-y-y-y too many quilt bloggers and spend a lot of my "free" time reading blogs.  So, I might tell you instead about how my quilting is different than it used to be when I first started 15  or so years ago.  For the longest time, I bought only kits to work from, or did other people's patterns.  That was a great way to get started as a quilter, as long as I could figure out the directions!  

Now, I am more able to take an idea and make it my own.  A good example of that is my latest Scrap-a-Palooza finish of the summer.  I started with Cyndy's idea, but let the fabric guide my design a little more, and ended up with something completely different than I initially set out to do.  And I am so pleased with the result:

Why do I write/create?

I have been sewing/quilting for a long time, but just recently realized that it is what I do to stay sane! My job is very demanding these days, and those demands can be stressful at times.  I have found that stepping away from the work I need to do, and going into my sewing room for even just a few minutes can make all the difference!

For a long time, I have been interested in doing something with writing, but never did much until I discovered blogging.  It has been great fun to learn how to make a blog, and all the techie skills that are needed to figure everything out, but also a great way to document what I have been doing as a quilter.  Again, I get lots of inspiration for my blog from other quilt bloggers that I follow.

How does my writing/creating process work?

I'm not sure I have an actual process!  I decided that my quilting hobby should be fun, a "want to", but never a "have to," so that is how I approach writing about it and creating quilts.  I enjoy reading other blogs to see how people choose words to describe their work, and I "stand on their shoulders" as we say in 5th grade when we are learning to write in different genres.  And I have learned a lot that way!

Due to a busy, work and family-filled week, I have not contacted anyone else about carrying on with the next round of Around the World, but here are some bloggers I enjoy for you to check out, if you haven't already:

Weekend Doings - amazing photography!

The Bored Zombie - a fun voice and all kinds of different projects!

Wasn't Quilt in a Day - such a happy blogger, you can't help but be happy, too!

Enjoy your week!

  

A Study in Green

Back in July, I started  a scrappy quilt inspired by Cyndy at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.  I have been following her Scrap-a-Palooza series all year, and this is the third quilt I have made based on her ideas.

I love scrappy quilts and was looking for better ways to have my scrappy quilts come together with a theme. Although I have a lot of scraps, they don't come in great big chunks, so designing a scrappy quilt around a theme seemed challenging at first.  But, it has been great fun and also a chance to practice different kinds of quilting.

My Rainbow Bars Quilt:

Then Honey Honey Bricks:

And, finally a finish for a Study in Green:

This quilt is inspired by Cyndy's July quilt, although it really evolved from my original idea, and looks nothing like what her finished quilt looks like!  I started by sorting through my green scraps and figuring out a gradation from dark to light.

I also added some Kona Maize to break up all the green and then cut each large block in half lengthwise.  In the process of trying different layouts for these long, thin blocks, I ended up putting them all together, without any sashing, and ended up with this:

It took awhile for me to get back to this quilt, but as I kept looking at it, I felt like it needed "something" to perk it up.  I ended up adding borders from my stash of Hello Sunshine from Connecting Threads.  The blue background with leaves of orange, white, and green  really made a difference and I have ended up being really happy with the outcome.

To quilt this one, I used an idea from Petit Design Co's 31 Days of Walking Foot Quilting series called Topography.  It turns out that this quilt really reminds me of beautiful, green fields, and the quilting I added made me think of a topographical map!  Fun!

The backing and binding is a marble-y green from Hobby Lobby in a pretty shade that I thought really added to the finish.  The finished quilt measures about 32 1/2" by 41."

Thanks, again, Cyndy, for your inspiration!  I'm having so much fun trying different color combinations, design ideas, and ways of quilting.