The Angel Tree

Every year during Advent our church has an Angel Tree.  On each of the paper angels is written something that is needed by one of several charities that our church supports.  Some have baby clothes and gifts for the local Pregnancy Support group.  Some have Christmas gift needs for the local Women's Shelter.  Some have gift cards and other needs for our grief and pastoral ministries.

Most years I pick one that has a gasoline gift card.  This year, the first one I picked was "lap throw."   I thought I'd try for a gas card again, so picked another.  "Twin comforter."  OK, it's a sign from the Angels after all.  I went home and searched through my quilts.  Time to pass along some of the quilts I have made to someone who needs them.

Today a basket of seven quilts went up to the church.  Most are lap quilts and a few baby quilts.  Several were made as mystery or challenge quilts.  They were fun to make, and I learned some new skills, but never made them for anyone in particular and never used any of them.  A bit more quilting was added to the borders of two of them before they left the house, and of course they all went through the washing machine one last time too.

I'm usually too self conscious of my quilting skills to give away quilts like this, but strangely, I'm not feeling uneasy about it at all.  I guess the time was right to do some letting go.

Two new finishes

Sew excited this week to have the binding done on these two lap quilts so they can be officially called Finished!

Circa 2016 was the summer sew-along from Temecula Quilt Company.  My version doesn't have the pieced HST border.  I have to admit, I forgot all about it when I was putting on the borders.  Guess I was too anxious to get it done!  But I already was debating whether to use them in a different project anyway.  This one has no batting and a gray fleece backing.  I feel like I'm cheating when I do that, but it's light weight and warm!

Circa 2016 48x56

Something's Fishy is done too!  This one is from blocks that didn't work out in another project and ended up as a quilt all on their own.  This is a free on-line pattern by Maywood Studio.

Something's Fishy 44x55

To round -up this week's progress, a really old Christmas UFO is now quilted and the binding is ready for hand stitching.   AND I cleaned out my fabric closet, adding two shelves to hold Christmas fabric, batting and my stack of UFO's.  Looks like I accomplished more than I realized!

Auditioning the corners

original yellow corners

The past week or two I've been super motivated to get some UFO's finished up.  Good progress is being made - slow but sure.

This morning I came across the perfect red fabric for the final border on Courthouse Stars - a Fons & Porter design.  But first, there's a decision to make and I'm stuck.

Originally, a plain yellow block was put in each corner, but it's bothering me.

The corners want to be dark, and I'm not quite sure how to do it.  So here's a few samples.

Simple dark HST

Rail fence

Log cabin facing outward

Log cabin facing center

It helps to look at pictures, don't you think?  Right now I'm leaning to the Log Cabin facing center, but it might be because of the value of the colors.  Rail fence is probably the easiest. Now is the time to replace those corners before the border is added.

Time to use my "Ask a friend."  What do you think?  Time to vote, everyone!