Charity Quilt Week 1 - Day 2

For the second day I managed to get about 9-10 hours.

I spent the day just sewing, cutting, and pressing.

I had enough things already chosen out to do so that I didn’t have to spend much time making decisions. That helped me get more done.

Here’s a sample of what I did.

Toggl (an app I have on my computer/phone) told me that today I spent 10 hours 24 min. on cutting/piecing and pressing. I got an early start.

In that, I did spend about 30 min. in trying to get my order right for the backing for the charity quilts. I had to communicate with a couple of companies here in Poland.

Otherwise, I spent:

8:39 minutes - uncovering my coral fabric - it was hidden back in a recess of my storage.

1 hour, 31 minutes - ironing tops

45:42 minutes cutting tops and borders

7 hours, 28 minutes sewing tops and borders on charity tops. I did get kind of tired of it - moment of transparency here. It is making me appreciate those who sew for a living 8-12 hours a day!

So far I have a small pile of tops ready to be sandwiched.

There are 8 smaller ones on the left (single/twin) and 5 doubles on the right. You can see the added border on the purple one on top I added the dark purple and then the lighter just to make it larger. Otherwise it isn’t really a double. My friend, Fran, in AZ makes the centers that look like this for me. She enjoys doing it and it helps me finish more charity quilts faster!

I have 8 small/singles and 5 doubles/queen size tops ready to go so far.

This is part of a strippy quilt I’m making. I didn’t really like the brown floral by Riley Blake that I had in my stash so I decided to “use it up” by sewing it into charity quilts. I’m trying to use up at least one whole shelf of florals! That’s going to be quite an accomplishment if I succeed.I have 3 or 4 shelves of “just florals”! It’s crazy!

Of those tops, 2 of the small/singles were tops donated by people from the Facebook group (a huge thank you!) and the other 6 were ones I’ve made - and the doubles were all made primarily by my friend, Fran, in AZ. All I did was add borders to make them a nice double/queen size.

Adding a wide plain border to one of Fran’s centers. Fran is a lady from AZ who loves making the Around the World design. She sends me several in a box at a time and I add borders and get them ready for give-away here in Poland.

I have been digging in piles I’ve not touched for a while. it’s kind of fun. I decided to tackle a couple of fun pillow panels I found today - they had a lot of coral in them. I decided to make them kind of wild. I actually was thinking about doing just a round and round border effect with some of the pillow panels, but making them longer than wide so they wouldn’t be square - so gradually make the top and bottom strips larger than the sides.

I’m pretending I’m Kaffe Fasset (HA!) and using wild (ish) fabrics as I go round these. the problem, of course, is that I really may not have that many truly wild fabrics as they haven’t been something I specialized in.

So “my wild” and what people who really get into that would be two different things.

Of the ones I had on the floor in yesterday’s picture, I’ve added borders to all but these two. Will tackle these next. Don’t worry, I have a whole bunch more to work on after I finish up these. It’s just that I only bring out a few at a time. Too many and I feel overwhelmed.

The beginning of the one I’m making kind of wild. Actually making two similar ones. The coral colored fabric in this picture is the same as the fabric on the floor in the picture above.

I started off the morning cutting and cutting. I’m in the process of making several strippy quilts. some of this cutting is for that. In this picture that wildish looking fabric is actually a Waverly upholstery piece. I’ve had excellent results by using this heavier fabric in simple charity quilts. They seem to last a long time and in spite of telling us that we are supposed to dry clean only, they wash fine.

I want to use up a lot of these florals by making them into shadow blocks using gray and black. I have so much of these floral pieces. They are fine, but not magnificent, and I’d like to get them put into quilt tops. I think this will be easy but impressive looking. I’m cutting the floral squares 9.5”.

Here the gallery of finished tops for today. Some are very similar to each other.

I just added borders Fran made the center

I just added a border

I just added a border

I just added a border

A while ago I made the center out of random blocks. I added the border just now to make it the right size

Scrapbook style using a panel

Scrapbook #4

Strippy - I made a couple of these

Scrapbook #5

The Strippy quilt I first saw many years ago on a website called www.maryquilts.com. Let me see if I can find it for you. I liked her proportions, but then for obvious reasons, I’ve just incorporated the idea into my own fabrics and such. I sometimes add borders if they aren’t wide enough for what I want. The Polish fabrics that I buy are over 60” wide, so I don’t need a border to get the 60'“ wide. However, if I don’t want to piece the centers and I’m using a 45” wide fabric, a border makes it all so much easier. Here’s the link.

This was my original plan - and how I learned how to make these. Mary has a lot of really nice stuff on her website. Lots of nice patterns and a nice blog. Check it out!

Summary picture of today’s finishes:

And that’s it. That’s what I got done today! Check back tomorrow for the next installment.

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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