Design Wall Monday

I have been very busy continuing to play catch up here and I'm not doing too bad so far. I really want to get a bit more caught up before I begin my long-term sub assignment late next month. There are an awful lot of projects that I need to do, so I'll just keep chugging along. Some of the projects are UFOs, while others are gifts or promised things. I'll just keep plugging along and am sure it will all work out well.

Remember the quilts I made for my friend's chemo nurses? I made one more, for a nurse who wasn't really forgotten about, but she had been gone so she didn't get put on the list. Her quilt is done and ready for delivery. (Sorry for the crappy picture.)

I also had to do some fixing on two of the other quilts. All of the quilts have names embroidered on them. Well, I guess we should have tripled checked spellings because two of the names have unique spellings and I had to rip out the embroidery, redo it, and then put the quilt back together. Because I had embroidered on just the quilt top, I actually had to rip out binding and quilting before I could get to the embroidered area. I then had to take a couple of blocks apart and then redo and add the embroidery back in. YUCK! On one of the quilts, the embroider spanned two pieced blocks and that was a real pain. It actually took just about as long to fix this as it did to construct the original quilt top. Lesson learned!

And because I know myself and recognize that if all I was doing was working on UFO projects I'd go bonkers, I cut strips for a quilt I've been wanting to make for Jack. I pieced the strips and am piecing the blocks as a leader and ender project.

I am using stash for this quilt and thought I would be happy with only making 20 blocks and then adding borders, but I've decided that won't work. I don't have enough of the light fabric to make this quilt with a 5 x 7 layout and the 4 x 5 layout is going to bother me. Do you notice that in the top row, if I only have four blocks, the first and last blocks will not be symmetrical? In the first block, the dark is on the top but in the last block it is on the sides. I know that is pretty minor, but it will bother me so I had to make an adjustment. 

My first thought was to finish this as planned and give it away, but then I thought that I really like these fabrics and want to make it work somehow.

I decided to add a third fabric and make some blocks with yellow instead of the light grey. I like how this is working so far. I didn't really doubt that I would like it because I have always liked yellow and grey together.  

I wasn't going to show this to Jack (it was going to be a surprise quilt), but decided that I would to get his thoughts on adding the yellow. He likes it and is leaning toward adding two vertical columns of yellow blocks (second and fourth columns) instead of the random placement I had thought about. I have more of the original blocks to piece and will make those before I sew more yellow blocks. Since it's his quilt, I'll let Jack make the decision on how this will be laid out.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be working on this very much over the next week because of a very busy schedule, but I'm ok with that. It fills my need to work on something new, while finishing something old. :-)

What are you working on today?

For inspiration and eye candy, check out

Judy L's Patchwork Times

and

Monday Makings

Friday Finishes - Sort of...

July was a VERY busy month!

I'm sure you saw that I was the July Desire to Inspire participant and that I was part of the Christmas in July Blog Hop. You can check out lots of pictures HERE, HERE, and HERE

What I did not share earlier, is that I made 8 lap quilts for the nurses who helped my best friend Kare during her 18 long weeks of chemo. (Side note here- I hope you all have an awesome friend like Kare. She really is special!)

Kare's husband Fernando asked me about making quilts for Kare's chemo nurses and I thought it was a great idea. The problem was that there were only four weeks until her last treatment and I had a couple of other projects with deadlines so I wouldn't be able to start them for a week. That meant I had three weeks to finish eight quilts. Oh dear! Nevertheless, I said yes with the condition that the quilts could be small (all are about 45" x 55") and that they could all be very simple in design.

Even before Kare started her treatments, our friend Denise and I made a quilt for Kare. Since Denise lives in TN and Kare and I live in OH, this was kind of like a long distance quilting bee. Denise and I each made 10 scrappy log cabin blocks out of a variety of pinks and cream. We each started with the same light green center so as to keep some consistency; but other than that, we used whatever we wanted. When Denise completed her blocks, she mailed them to me and I finished the quilt. We were thrilled that Kare liked the quilt, used it often, and even took it to chemo with her.

I love the heart shape that shows up with this log cabin layout. I decided that I wanted to quilt hearts and I know you can't see it in the picture above, so here's a close up picture.

And just because I thought it would be fun, I used some bra fabric on the back. Kare and Denise like it too, as I knew they would.  :-)

Here's Kare at home with the quilt after one of her treatments.

So let's fast forward to the last day of her chemo - July 11, 2016.

I love this picture! Kare looks pretty darn happy to be done with this portion of her journey back to health.

Fernando looks happy too.

I snapped a picture of the stack of quilts before I left my house. This is a stack of "thank you" hugs to eight wonderful nurses. They have no idea how special they are to so many people!

This is another of my favorite pictures. The nurses were all surprised and they all liked their quilts. Fernando had been asking them about their favorite colors and they had no idea that it was to personalize quilts for them.

I was honored to be with Kare and Fernando that day and even though there were tears shed, they were tears of joy and thanks.

Now that Kare has started her 6-8 weeks of radiation (5 days a week!), I feel like I have to think of something fun to do when that is over. We'll need to do some serious celebrating!

I snapped pictures of the individual quilts. You know, just because I could.

I really like this chevron quit. It reminds me of a Charlie Brown shirt. Jenny's favorite colors are purple and pink,

Suzanne likes coral and reddish orange. I really like how this turned out too.

Purple was a favorite for a few of the nurses. Melissa said she likes all shades of purple and I think this fit the bill.

Betty likes dark green. Simple, but effective!

Lisa was another purple gal and I really like the airiness that is created from sashing these rail fence blocks.

I was a little concerned when Fernando told me that Sue likes grey. I decided on this pattern and am very surprised that it turned out to be one of my favorite quilts. Fernando likes it too, as does my husband Jack. I may have to make a few more of these in the near future.

Sandy likes purple too and I like the distribution of the purples in this quilt.

Vickie likes shades of green. This traditional rail fence looks quite different than the purple sashed one, doesn't it?

I am very happy with how these all look. It was a labor or love that I would certainly do again if needed.

I'm linking to Sarah's - Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I love seeing other people's projects. It is such eye candy and inspiration.