Sew In for Mountain Baby Blankets

Well, all our family has gone home, vacation is over, and yesterday I headed back to work at the shop to our Sew-In for Mountain Baby Blankets. Seven of us were there to work on quilts to donate to the Christian Appalachian Project for the children in the mountains of Kentucky. We started with a big pile of scraps (and a little chocolate to keep us going).

Starlyn showed us the "String Piecing" method using a foundation to sew strips together randomly to make some striking quilts.

Everyone was busy sewing and Starlyn kept busy pressing and trimming blocks. With so many hands and this method the process moves along pretty fast.

The weather outside was beautiful for a change (we've had a lot of rain lately), so it really meant a lot to have the volunteers come in and give of their time for this cause!

In a very short time the ladies made these two tops, one with a red center strip in each block, and one with a blue center strip. Char took them (and some other tops we had) home to quilt up.

This last picture shows the blocks that Heather and I worked on. We didn't do a common center strip and our blocks are a little smaller, so we will be setting these blocks together with a light blue sashing between them. I brought them home to finish the top and quilt (hopefully soon).

We had a lot of fun ~ this is a great method when you want to just sit and sew and not do much thinking, and it is really nice to do it with friends! I'll be putting together a box later this week for a shipment for Mountain Baby Blankets and I'll keep everyone posted as to how many we send out in this box ~ and so far we do have a children's book to go along with each quilt!

This will be an ongoing effort, and we'll have another Sew-In soon (keep an eye on our website's events page for the next one). At today's end Starlyn sorted through the "strings" that we had left and put together some real nice combinations for great starts to our next batch of quilts ~ and as we all know, our scrap piles are forever growing, so there will definitely be more quilts to come!

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn