The top is done! A raffle quilt  for the Children’s Alopecia Project. The pattern is from Boo Davis’ fun book,  Dare to Be Square Quilting: A Block-by-Block Guide to Making Patchwork and Quilts.
You can see last year’s donation here and learn more about my support for this cause.

The quilt (machine quilted by my amazing mom) will be raffled off at the Mutts Making Money For Melaina Community Family Fun Day
25 September  2011
11:00 am to 2:00 pm

Black Rock Park
1286 Black Rock Road
Oaks, PA

Comment or send me an email if you’re interested in raffle tickets!

For my cousin’s little boy. First baby quilt finished before the shower (even if that means I stitched on binding while on the way to the shower)!

I used a fat quarter pack for the patches and yardage for the border and backing.

Fabrics from Purl Soho and The City Quilter from a New York trip in January.

Pattern from Quick and Easy Projects for the Weekend Quilter also used for this quilt. The puppies just make me smile, and I hope a little boy likes his quilt as I much as I enjoyed making it!

A good friend from college, Beth, is the awesome mother of two beautiful girls. Her youngest daughter, Melaina, was diagnosed with Alopecia in 2009. Alopecia is the loss of head and body hair that may or may not be treatable depending on whether a cause can be identified. Melaina is an active, healthy, beautiful little girl, and Beth is on a mission to raise awareness and funding for Alopecia support and research.

Last September Beth organized Mutts Making Money For Melaina Community Family Fun Day, a dog walk, silent auction, bake sale, and family games. My mom and I made this baby quilt/lap quilt as a donation to the silent auction. The dog bone pattern seemed to fit the theme, and I found the retro dog print fabric in Burlington, Vermont last year on our honeymoon trip. The piecing was time consuming but worth the effort to get the dog bone look – its a mix of squares and half square triangles. I’m sorry the pictures don’t do it justice – we were finishing up the night before the auction!

Beth is holding the event again this year, and we will be there to help out and maybe have a new quilt project in the auction (depending on a 9+ lb excuse for not posting to the blog that I will post about soon)! I’ve made a lot of quilts as gifts for new babes, graduations, and other special events, but it was especially nice to know I was supporting such an important cause with this special quilt.
Please consider making a donation to support the Children’s Alopecia Project. Their mission is “to help any child in need who is living with hair loss due to all forms of alopecia. We build self-esteem, provide support and raise awareness. We would like our CAP Kids to grow in confidence and become stronger teens and productive adults, maybe even the advocates of the future dealing with alopecia.”
Donate

				

A friend of mine just had a new baby girl and I had to make her a fun quilt but, being a crazy mom, I had a limited amount of time. I am not lying when I tell you that I made this “quilt” in about 2 1/2 hours! I prewashed the fabrics a day or two ahead of time and did the rest in one night.

I started by cutting squares of fabric in different colors and patterns. I cut about 6 each 17 1/2″ square. I cut them this size because I wanted to cut them 18″ and was a little short when I measured. So as you can see, this isn’t perfection – but it works!

After I had quite a few patterns and colors cut out, I arranged them and decided to use 3 across and 4 down in 2 different colored polka dots.

I stitched the top pieces together and pinned it to a piece of fleece. I cut around it to have a perfectly sized backing to the blanket. Since it was a thick soft fleece, I didn’t have to use batting inside.

I then stitched the fleece to the pieced top (right sides together, and already pre-pinned!) and flipped it back inside in. I topstitched around the edges and then I took a break!

Lastly, instead of traditional quilting, I did small ties at each intersection.

I hope Sadie enjoys her new blanket. Her future best friend agreed to model it for a photo:

Try to make one and send me some pictures if you do!

If you haven’t seen the Blogger’s Quilt Festival quilts, you are missing something wonderful. If you have just a little time – be sure to look at the flickr pool of quilt photos. More time? Be sure to follow the links and read the great stories that go along with the photos. Here is my submission to the Spring 2010 Blogger’s Quilt Festival.

Renee’s Quilt

I chose this quilt as my entry because I haven’t completed a new quilt since finishing this one! While I have lots of works in progress like this baby shower quilt (the beautiful babe is here now, but I am still collecting squares) and this project (off to the machine quilter today), life has been just too busy to start to new quilt projects (well, unless you count this one, but it was really large squares…and this one, but it was really small squares)! Anyways…

Back to the quilt! I made this quilt last year for a friend finishing graduate school. Graduating from school is an awesome achievement for anyone, but for this friend, I had been there when she made the first decision to go back to school (after a number of years), take the GRE, and submit her application. It is a wonderful thing to see someone make the decision to make a change in their life and go for it with everything they have.

The quilt itself I explain in this previous post, so I won’t go into detail about the process, but what I love about this quilt is how only three different fabrics come together to look simple and complex at the same time. I had always wanted to use a batik, and it was actually my fiance that said the multi colored print reminded him of my friend (yes, I dragged him to the fabric store – I needed a second opinion on some backing fabric).

This quilt was probably one of the fastest quilts I have made from start to finish, and also one of the only I have probably completed prior to the event in which I was giving the quilt. I am not sure why that is – maybe the simplicity of the pattern (although the borders were tricky) or the size of the squares or the quilt or just procrastinating from packing? I am sure I will use this pattern again and it would be fun to see it in a whole different color combination!

Thanks, Amy, for hosting the quilt festival. What a wonderful way to bring the crafty, quilting blogging world together!