Next 10 Charity Tops Finished and Ready to Go

Last fall I had to work on adding some borders to some quilt top centers I had in order to get the 120 tops ready for charity quilts for 2026. I’m starting early on the next batch of 120 tops— hopefully not relegating it all to the same few weeks of the year. I’d like to spread it out throughout the year which will make the next batch “not difficult” as long as I make myself do it each month.

Here are the first ten for the year that I was able to get done. Each of these top centers were made by someone else - but I added borders to make them big enough. That is, except for the strips ones - which I made from strips from fabrics along with those little rows of strips.

 
 

I worked on those little strips that Ewa and her mom make. I had put them away for a while - from last year, in fact, and I decided to go ahead and tackle some more of them — this time making the strips go sideways instead of up and down as I’ve done in the last couple of years. I also decided to use the denim blue fabric I had simply because I had purchased 100 meters of it and hardly used any of it at all! I decided it was time to change that!

Yes, I’m still planning on using a lot of the black and gray from my Big Fabric Haul - as I’ve already used a bit of it - but will bring some more back to the house so I can cut it into strips for making these up.

They go relatively quickly and really do look nice. The ones I make with the menswear really end up being heavier and warmer quilts, so it is fine. However, I wanted a change, so that’s why I chose to use the red polka dot and denim blue solidish.

This bag is ready to go to the church to the container labeled “ready to quilt”! Yeah! Another ten ready to be stored until I can quilt them.

Any of the other tops you see are just smaller tops that people gave me but I had to do something to the size to make them the European single I’m aiming for for most of these. I will have some larger ones as well - but I am aiming for either a single or double size - but not really anything in between. It is just easier when I have the give away if I can place the double size (fulls/queens) in a different place than the singles. It just makes it easier when people choose quilts. The vast majority of people actually want the single size, but some are delighted to have the larger ones as well!

I still think this one I’m showing below is one of the best quilting job I have ever done on a top I’ve been gifted for charity. This was a huge lone star quilt and it had a lot of humps and was a pretty big challenge to quilt. One side was larger than the other. However, I did it on my domestic Janome back in 2018. I truly did “quilt out” a ton of extra fabric and tried to make it go back into being a square quilt. It was quickly chosen that year when I had the give away. It may have been the first large quilt chosen.

Because it was so much work for me —and I know it was a ton of work for someone who gave me the top - I am really proud of it. I wish the person who donated it could have seen it after it was finished. It is amazing, IMO. (I don’t know who gave it to me - for all I know it was donated by some family members of someone who has passed away). But here it is. I’m sure by now I could do a much better job of the quilting, even, than back then, but it has been covering people for all these years, so that’s great, right? The colors are fantastic.

Thanks again for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.

Becky PetersenComment