New Little Helpers

The New Year has brought new schedules.  I've been busy keeping up with work and quilty jobs, but mostly I've been trying to keep up with these two ~ my new little helpers.  Over the Winter Break they moved back up here close.  Their Mom started a new job, so I've been on Grandma duty, spending time with my little Cutie Patooties during the day until other daycare arrangements are made.  So lately my days are full with going to the bus stop, sing-a-longs of songs that I thought I had forgotten, and pondering deep mysteries like: How many socks can two little girls own...and why can't they keep them on their feet?...and fitting in some sewing here and there during nap time and other stolen moments. 
 

My new helpers and I don't have any sewing that we can show right now, but we do have some more Mountain Baby Blanket donations that we're adding to our box that's almost ready to ship out!  Pat Wyatt, a Baltimore Applique Society friend, donated two of these cute little quilts along with children's books to the cause.  We should have enough to ship out another box to the Appalachian Mountains soon :)

Enjoy the day!
Dawn

A Fresh & Fun Break

When I need a break from the tons of designing that I've been doing lately, I like to make up little crib quilts :)  This is my Fresh & Fun Modern Crib Quilt. 

It's made with one little charm pack of Moda's Salt Air fabric collection designed by Cosmo Cricket, some coordinating yardage from the collection for the backing and binding, and a little Kona Bone.

 I quilted it with an all over meander with a light pink variegated thread.
 

This is the cute fabric I used for the backing and binding.  The quilt's so easy to stitch up, I've made a couple for gifties, and one to ship out as a donation for Mountain Baby Blankets :) 

Kits for the quilt are available both on the SWD Website, and Our Etsy Shop ~ and they include all fabric including the backing and binding!  ...Or if a really quick gift is needed, you can just buy the quilt already made Here in the Etsy Shop, so spread the word :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

More Charity Quilts Sent Out in the World!

..."I get by with a little help from my friends"... I've been humming that Beetles song lately.  I have to give credit where credit is due ~ the other day my buddy Cameron came over and helped me match up kiddie books to these donated baby quilts and helped me package them all up for their trip to the Appalachian Mountains.  (He even donated some of the books to our cause!)
 

He held a few of them up for you to see.  These pre-quilted panels were donated to me by my friend Sheri (yes, she's the friend that quilted my quilt from yesterday's post). 

Then, since I was so crazy busy at the time, I passed them on to my friend Starlyn to add the bindings when she got the chance... 

Starlyn had a sewing day with our friend Mary and together they bound all of the little quilts!

...And now with a little quilt that I had here added in, we have a box of twelve more baby quilts and books going off to the Christian Appalachian Project for their Mountain Baby Blanket initiative. Cameron came over and spent another day with me, and he even helped me by carrying the box in to the UPS Store ~ I got help on these truly from beginning to end!

If you have some crib-twin size quilts (or just tops are ok), or childrens books that you'd like to donate to the cause, contact me and I can give you the details.  I'm pleased to say, thanks to the donations from friends and readers, we've now sent 63 quilts, plus books, and some blankets and pillowcases to the Christian Appalachian Project to be distributed to the young mothers there ~ I have some great friends :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Cuddly Happines Shipped in a Box

I wanted to share that another box of Mountain Baby Blankets went out last week to the folks at the Christian Appalachian Project.  These were all donated by friends, some needed binding, some needed quilting, and some were complete but we needed to get some more story books to pair up with them, so they've been here for a while waiting to have enough to fill a box.  Well we finally had enough cuddly happiness ready to go, so it was time to ship to Kentucky :)

My good friend Cathe even donated this lovely adult sized quilt to go to some happy big person.  I'm sure it will be appreciated and provide warmth for many years to come!  Thank you all for your generosity, I'm so blessed to have such good friends!

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Playing with Warm Fuzzies

I've had some crazy stressful days lately, so with my little bit of sewing time when I got home today I wanted to work on something easy and quick.  So I used some flannel fabrics that were donated by my web friend Rita for our Mountain Baby Blanket initiative, and cut some rag squares with my AccuQuilt Go! Cutter.  I know there are plenty of Rag Quilt tutorials out there, but I figured I'd show you how easy it was to whip mine up (And it's the first Rag Quilt I've ever made!)

For each rag square (Cut with the 8 1/2" Rag Die #55013), I layered a 6 1/2" square of batting (cut using the 6 1/2" square die #55000) ~ perfect use for leftover batting pieces by the way!  When cutting my flannel rag squares I cut two layers of flannel at a time.  Any more than that with my Rag Die was pretty difficult to run through, so I didn't push it. 

Then another rag square is layered on top (wrong sides together with the batting in between).  Then, so the batting doesn't do any shifting in there, sew two diagonal lines from corner to corner to quilt each block.  I didn't do any pinning for this, but I did find that using a walking foot was helpful with the layers.  I was able to chain stitch all of the blocks pretty quickly too.

After all of the blocks are sandwiched, sew the blocks into rows.  I made mine from 20 blocks set in 5 rows of 4 blocks.  When sewing the blocks together, use a large 1" seam allowance.  My machine had this handy line marked 25 that happens to be 1" from needle center, so I could use that as my reference.  If your machine doesn't have a marking for a 1" seam allowance, you can apply painters tape on your machine bed as your reference line. 

Press the seams between the blocks open.

Then sew the rows together in the same manner.  After all the rows are sewn together, sew all around the outside edge, again about an inch in. 

This is what the finished front looked like before I washed and dried it to fray the edges.  It measured about 28" x 34" before I washed it (I had not pre-washed any of the fabrics before sewing).  Then after laundering the final quilt measures approx. 27" x 33".  It's the perfect size for nap-time cuddling, and for traveling in the car seat or stroller.  After all, if you make it too big a toddler can't drag it around as a Lovey easily. 

I used the same fabric for the front and back of each of my block sandwiches, so this is what the back of my little quilt looks like.  I love these muted 1930's vintage prints :)

So here she is all finished.  By using the AccuQuilt Go! Rag Die, I didn't have to do any of that cutting to fringe the edges after it was assembled.  I just threw it in the washer and was all done!  Playing with the warm fuzzies, and getting the instant gratification of a quick project definitely topped off my day on a good note. 

I've listed it for sale in my Etsy store and the proceeds will go to paying for shipping for our next box full of donations to go out to the Christian Appalachian Project for the Mountain Baby Blankets Initiate...And I have enough fabrics left over to make another one to put in the box and donate :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

The Quilting Elves Have Been Hard At Work

One of my little quilting elves gave these two quilts back to me to box up for the Mountain Baby Blankets donations to Christian Appalachian Project.  Isn't it a happy quilt :)

These are tops that were generously donated to us for Mountain Baby Blankets, and Mary Nielsen of Keep Me In Quilts, quilted them up for me in her "spare time". 

Mary does beautiful work on her HQ 16, and we are very fortunate that she is so generous with her time too (because you should see my pile, and somehow it's not getting any smaller!)

And aren't these backs bright and happy too!  They were donated as well :)

I'm accumulating a bunch of kiddie fabric scraps from these and past projects that hopefully I can cut up this weekend with my Accuquilt Go! and whip up a couple more donation quilts pretty quickly to fill up a box for shipment :)

...And if you're looking for a cute give away, head over to Stephanie's A Ditchen Time Quilts to enter her Blog Anniversary Give Away for a sweet little purse that she made :)  It goes until September 17th.  Thanks Stephanie!  And while you are there, read Stephanie's account of her memories of 9/11, it's worth the time.

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Another Cuddly Shipment

On Saturday, my Finish It UP projects were binding quilts. I got several of them finished :)

This one was a donation top for Mountain Baby Blankets, that my friend Sheri Thompson of Pieceful Completion did the beautiful long arm quilting on.

It's a large size quilt that should fit on a twin bed, and will make some child very happy!

This quilt completed the box we have been steady filling, so we bundled them all with childrens books and have them packed and ready to head out to the Christian Appalachian Project. Thanks again for your generous donations!!

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Mountain Baby Blanket Finish Ups

I've been really busy, honest I have, I just have nothing that I can show for it on the blog right now. Some of the projects I've been working on are for upcoming publications, so can't show them quite yet, and I have a little web surprise in the works that I hope to unveil next week :)

But in the meantime, I wanted to show you a what couple of the latest Mountain Baby Blanket donations look like all quilted up. My friend Mary Nielsen of Keep Me In Quilts quilted and bound these tops and got them back for me this week (much sooner than I expected!). I took them out on the deck in the sunshine to let you get a good look at her all over quilting designs :)

I have another top that was quilted by a friend that I hope to get the binding on soon and give you a peek of that one. Hopefully Heather and I will be matching them all with storybooks this weekend, and preparing a box to ship out for next week! We're getting a little low on book donations, so we may have to drag ourselves storybook shopping too ;)

Pat Sloan is hosting a Finish It Up Weekend starting tomorrow that she mentions here in this blog post. I have previous plans for later in the weekend, but before I go I'll be finishing up my Project Quilting Challenge project, and hopefully binding a bunch of quilts :) Do you have something to finish up this weekend?

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Some More Mountain Baby Blanket Love

More Mountain Baby Blanket donations have come in, and it didn't rain yesterday ~ so I could take some pictures.

These lovelies are from Carol Crager. She sent tops, backs and binding! Thanks Carol for your generosity!

We should have a full box of completed quilts ready to ship out to the Christian Appalachian Project soon ☺

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Better Late Than Never

It's been deadline central around here lately. My son's college classes are winding down, so he has been frantic with assignments, I've had financial deadlines to meet for my dad, and I've been busy with meeting deadlines for publications, and the quilt shop. I made this sample for the quilt shop to have in time for the quilt show last week (And Sew It Goes was a vendor at the show). It's called Wild Rose Quilt from Pat Sloan's Quilt the Seasons Book 2.

Well, I mostly had met the deadline on this one. I had it up as a sample at the show, but most of the applique was just fused down...And today I got to stay home and sew, so I completed the blanket stitching today.

Then since I had a day with my sewing machine, I finished this one for a Mountain Baby Blanket donation. I have had this panel for quite a while. Today I simply finished the quilting on it and put some binding on.

All ready to ship! That's two finishes in one day ~ Hopefully I can be even half as productive tomorrow :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

More Donation Love and a Winner

I received another box of happiness on my doorstep yesterday with more donations for Mountain Baby Blankets. This one came from Rita Smick ~ These tops are just adorable!

She even sent some fabric bundles of cuddly flannel fat quarters, and a couple of cute prints for me (or one of my little elves) to make into donation quilts. Thanks Rita for your generous donations!

And our winner of the set of Miniature Quilts magazines from Thursday is #5 Pewter and Steel. Send me an email so that I can get your shipping information :)

Enjoy the day!

~ Dawn

A Box on my Doorstep

I was greeted yesterday afternoon by a little package on my front porch that really brightened my day. I had spent the morning serving as my dad's escort to a CT scan that he needed, a task that you would think is pretty straight forward ~ right?. A transport company came and picked us up from the nursing home with a wheelchair van and dropped us off at the radiology place.

After dealing with not having the right paperwork from the nursing home, waiting for "like forever" for his test, waiting some more for our van to come back to pick us up, getting caught in the automatic door, and getting my knitting bag caught in the wheelchair wheel while I was pushing (who knew there was such a learning curve with a wheelchair) ~ We finally arrived back at the nursing home ~ hours later ~ safe and sound.

...So it was quite a delight to find a box on my doorstep when I finally got back home, with all of these quilt tops, all donations from Carol for Mountain Baby Blankets!

Along with all four of these beautiful crib quilts, Carol included the backing and bindings for each! They will be lovingly quilted soon and included in our next shipment to the Christian Appalachian Project. My wish is that the recipients of these quilts are as pleased to receive them as I was yesterday ~ Thank You for the smiles Carol! :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn