Quilting for a cause

I love quilting, I love my friends, and I love helping others.

Love, love, love.

So of course, when a very good friend of mine asked if I could make a little something to auction off at a fundraiser she is putting on, I jumped up off the couch and got to work.

A family she goes to church with recently found out that the husband has leukemia. Again. So she has taken it upon herself to put together a couple fundraiser events to support them in this difficult time. She's amazing. 

I'm always a little nervous making things for others... I'm mostly self-taught and my skill-set is pretty amateur, but I love quilting. Especially when things come out well. :)

So here's what I came up with. It's one of those wonky/crazy-cut quilts that I love so much. :) I had everything on hand except the minky back. Hobby Lobby and that 40% off coupon of theirs were there for me with that one. 

I finished it pretty quickly and wanted to get it to her right away, so it's a bit wrinkled from getting stuffed in a bag, but you get the idea. 

If you'd like more info on the fundraiser, to donate or participate in the auction, visit http://www.teamjackrapp.blogspot.com. :) Every little bit counts!

Scrappy quilt

Right after Christmas, Cory set me to work on another quilt. This one was to be a belated Christmas gift. I immediately consulted my stash. Since the intended recipient was a guy, I needed to find the least feminine fabric I could, which at this point meant my scraps. I was actually really excited to make this one. It would be my first scrappy quilt! I buy 90% of my fabric from the discount bin, so I get really random amounts. 1/2 yard here, 1/4 yard there, sometimes even a whole yard! So my scraps are extremely plentiful and varied. 

I had enough of each fabric to cut bunches of 2 & 1/2 inch wide strips of varying length. I sewed my strips together in 3's & then cut them into 6 & 1/2 inch long blocks. (I loosely followed this pattern).

Bunches of 3 strips wide x 6 & 1/2 in long blocks. 

The arrangement to the lower left of the picture is a completed block.

Then I arranged the little blocks into 4's to make the complete blocks. It's important to arrange all your completed blocks the same. So if you start with vertical facing strips in the upper left as I have, you must start all subsequent blocks the same way.
I sewed my arranged blocks together, trued them to 12 & 1/2 inches, and then arranged them on the floor as I wanted them to appear in the quilt (below) before sewing them all together.

My little helper

Completed quilt face with border attached.

Quality testing :)

Done!

Quilted & bound.

Close up :)

Super soft minky on the back!

I love how it turned out! Cor and I are pretty sure this is one of my best yet! :) It was fun to see what all my scraps could turn into! Luckily I have plenty more scraps, so who knows, maybe the best is still yet to come. :)

Dad's Christmas Quilt

The embroidery reads, "Merry Christmas 2011"

Now that Christmas Day has passed, I'm free and clear to post pics of a quilt I made specifically for my dad. I gave it to him for Christmas this year :)
I must say, Cory and I have grown to love celebrating Christmas as just the 2 of us (+Cruze) since we've had to the past few years (our employment has stunted our options), but this year my one regret would be that I wasn't able to see my dad open his quilt for the first time.

Quilts are interesting. So much time and effort and planning and work go into them. As a quilter, I've learned that its much harder than one might think to part with each quilt. I've grown up with a very sentimental family, and I knew if anyone would like something I've made it would be my dad. Because of this, It was far from a chore to create his quilt, but I still felt very anxious about his receiving reaction. Especially since he had no idea I was doing anything like this!

I was only able to speak with my family briefly on Christmas Day. They're attention was diverted elsewhere, particularly because they spent a fair amount of time talking to my brother Spencer, who is finishing out his mission in Oaxaca, Mexico, (Feel free to visit his blog of which I am the creator and administrator!) and my grandparents were also over for most of the day. Good distractions, but still. :)

From the words that we did exchange, my dad specifically praised and thanked me for the quilt, which just put me on cloud 9. :)
Tuesday, while Dad was at work, I called up my mom and sister, who told me that the quilt was a hit. They said Dad loved it, was very impressed with it, and showed it off to Nana & Papa once they arrived.

Crazy-cut front

Minky backing

This is why I quilt. This is why I spend hours and hours and hours on each one. To me, it's worth the effort when the recipient really appreciates the finished product. :)

Merry Christmas!

Commissioned Quilt

It was the first quilt that I've ever been paid to make, and it was a beast. Cory's coworker heard in passing that I make quilts, and once she heard that she kept after it until Cory decided she was serious and showed her pictures of my projects past. 

(Molly's green quilt)

She picked this green quilt I'd made for my BFF Molly and said she'd like one just like it in blue & white, but also much bigger. So we negotiated a price (I gave her a screamin' good deal), she paid Cory and I got to work.

Going to the fabric store to select all the fabric for a quilt like this was daunting. I don't know this lady, or her daughter's boyfriend (who the quilt is going to be a gift for), nor have I even met her, and she's paying me to do this! No pressure right? :)

I asked Cory plenty of questions before-hand, and gathered as much information as I could about what she wanted. It was easy enough. Like she said at the get-go, she wanted it to be twin-sized, blue & white with blue fabric, preferably minky, on the back. That was all the direction I was given. 

 (Fabric selection)

I'm pretty sure that if you all could see me shop at Jo-Ann's you would think I was neurotic. I have a system. When it comes to selecting all the fabric for a quilt at once instead of piecing a quilt face together from remnants, it gets weird. I seriously do about 4 laps through every fabric isle grabbing everything with potential. Then I find an empty shelf (there always is one) where I set up all of my potentials and begin arranging, adding, subtracting and eliminating. When I think I have it, I step back and take a pic. If the pic is good, I head to the cutting counter.

So this is what I came up with!

 (First set of blocks laid out as a test)

I can always tell that a "crazy cut" quilt is going to look good if I get nervous as I make the first set of blocks. It's a weird feeling. First, I start second-guessing myself and doubting if my fabric choices were off, then I realize that every time I feel this way at the beginning, it always looks great. The real litmus test is to lay out the first set of blocks once they're pieced and trued. That kind of foreshadows the rest of the project.

(before I ripped it apart)

I hit a road-block of sorts with the backing. I use minky all the time, and it usually puts up a fight, but this time it brought out the big guns. Lets just say after a lot of stress and a lot of work for nothing I pulled my nearly finished quilt apart and put super soft navy blue flannel on the back like I probably should have in the first place.

In the end, it turned out just how I'd hoped. I cleaned it up, folded it up and put it in a bag ready for Cory to take it away. Then I remembered I needed to take some pictures since I'd never see it again! So it's a bit wrinkly, but here's my finished product!! (some pics in daylight, some at night... I pulled an all-nighter and finished it between 4 & 5 this morning!)

She asked me to embroider "A mother's heart is a patchwork of love" and "Jeremy 2011" onto the quilt. So I made a strip to go across the back and added the message there.

:)