Hands2Help 2022 Challenge Parade

 I have participated in the Hands2Help Challenge since 2019. I came upon the challenge when Sarah from Confessions of a Fabric Addict was hosting. That first year, I donated 1 quilt to Jack's Basket. In 2020 and 2021 I increased the number of quilts I donated. In 2020, they went to Little Lambs Foundation. In 2021, I donated to Little Lambs and Hometown Heros. This year, Sarah could not host due to personal reasons but Mari from The Academic Quilter stepped up. 

This year I donated 2 quilts to The Little Lambs Foundation. 

My first quilt is called Whirligig. I drew up this pattern on graph paper and found fabrics in my stash that would coordinate. 

The backing is a woven green plaid from my stash.

details: machine pieced and machine quilted in straight lines 1/2" apart.

It finished at 36.5" x 42.5" 

I knew that I wouldn't have time to make another quilt (see my previous post for why) but wanted to donate another one so I looked through the abundance of quilts that I have made and that have been living at my house in my quilt cabinet. I decided to chose one to donate to Little Lambs. This quilt is called Soho Chic.

I made this quilt in 2014. The fabric is by Sandy Gervais. I had several mini charm packs so I made 9-patch blocks and snowball blocks.

The finished size is 36.5" square.

I love this little quilt but it wasn't getting the love that it would get by being donated to a great cause. 

I added a label to note that this was donated as part of the Hands2Help 2022 Challenge and sent it off. 

I hope it will be as loved as much as I love it!

Linking to Hands2Help2022 Challenge Parade @The Academic Quilter

A very busy but very good time!

 It seems that things happen at the same time! We have been extremely busy in our personal lives and those of our kids. When my daughter announced that she would be having our 2nd grandchild in May, we knew it would be close to when our youngest daughter would graduate from pharmacy school. We just didn't know how close! It just happened that my daughter's scheduled C-Section was scheduled for May 17th and my other daughter's graduation was on May 20th (in Austin, TX.) Arrangements were made for watching Magnus (the big brother) after we needed to leave for Austin early Thursday morning. But before we left, we were able to visit our new granddaughter in the hospital!

Happy Mormor

Happy family

Magnus holding his baby sister

Sweet Freya Ruth

We were headed to Austin early Thursday morning and met up with my daughter and her fiance, Brendan. We met Brendan's parents for the first time and had a wonderful time getting to know them. We celebrated Brendan and Kari's engagement! However, the main event of the weekend was Kari's graduation from pharmacy school. We now have a Dr. of Pharmacy in our family! 

Congratulations Kari! We are so proud of you!

So in between all this excitement, I did finish 124 blocks for Clue 2 of the O Say Can You Sew! QAL. It took me nearly the entire month to finish and trim each block!

I also finished the stitching on my hoop embroidery project. I'm please with how it turned out. I still need to trim and secure it in the hoop!

I'll be linking to Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Friday Fun Foto @Powered by Quilting, TGIFF @Sarah Goer Quilts, and Linky Party @Patchwork and Quilting

I'll be back tomorrow for the final parade of quilts for the 

Hands2Helps2022 Challenge!

Part 2 - The Quilt Blocks

 My last post was getting a bit long so I thought I would continue on Part 2 for the quilt blocks I finished. 

For May, Angela announced sage and/or dark greens as the color of the month. I pulled my green fabrics and started cutting for the Hang Ten block.

The bonus of this block is the HST I use in my Squiggle blocks. 

Then I pulled more greens and some scraps of gray for my 3rd RSC block.

I will link up with Scrap Happy Saturday @So Scrappy.

I made 2 blocks in pink for the Stash Buster Challenge on FB.

Kat over @Kat and Cats quilts posted the new block for the 

May/June 

blocks for Covered in Love charity. Here are my blocks. 

On YouTube, I have been following Lisa Bongean for her QAL: Oh Say Can You Sew. This is a mystery QAL but I decided to try it because of the patriotic colors. Each month another clue is released. I finished working on Clue 1 for April.

Scrappy 9 patch blocks in blue and white!

I'm also getting close to finishing my Hands2Help donation quilt. Stay tuned for a separate post about this great cause!

A Quilt Rescue and Some Quilt Blocks

 My daughter gave me a baby quilt that she received when my grandson was born. She doesn't remember who gave it to her. As she was going through baby things in preparation for the new baby, she knew that she would not use it. It was clearly not made well (I'm sure whoever made it tried their best but the quality wasn't there). Instead of just tossing it out, I set out to rescue it. The binding was a single fold binding but the stitching was visible and knotted all around.

I removed the binding and then found that the batting did not extend out to the outer yellow border on all sides. There was no quilting in the borders. So I needed to remove the yellow border. 

There were many places that the quilting caused puckers especially in the printed border.  The border was also not measured correctly as it was wavy. Another problem was that some of the piecing stitches were loose causing a hole. 

To fix it, I added a small piece of fusible and then hand stitched it closed.

Although not perfect, better than the hole that was there.  

I did not want to take out the quilting as it appeared to be quilted on a long arm machine (no quilting in the side borders but still a lot of work), so I squared up the quilt as best I could, remade the binding to be a double fold binding and reattached it the proper way. 

It looks much better and will now be able to restand washings. 

This quilt will be donated.

I will link up to Finished or Not Friday @AlyciaQuilts, Linky Party @Quilting Patchwork, Friday Foto Fun @ PoweredByQuilting, and TGIFF @ Anja Quilts.