The Basic Charity Challenge 2012

For the 2nd year in a row, Cara Wilson from Cara Quilts has issued a challenge to the quilting community. Cara, the host of the ever-popular weekly #talknt chat on Twitter for quilters everywhere, is asking for us all to help those less fortunate in our communities and, in return, she's offering up some fantastic prizes. Here's more from Cara's post on the 2012 challenge:

In our daily lives we have a lot of things we think of as basics.

This morning you brushed your teeth with a toothbrush and tooth paste.

You used toilet paper.

Had soap to wash your hands.

Put on some deodorant.

Ran a brush through your hair.

Maybe took a shower with shampoo, conditioner, body wash and a razor.

Put some make-up on.

You were able to put on clean underwear and socks, that no one else has ever worn.

In the kitchen did you grab some paper towels to clean up a little spill?

At some point during the day you probably grabbed a coffee or tea.

Used some tissue to blow your nose. Maybe sanitized your hands after.

I could go on but you probably have the point by now. We have a LOT of things that we consider basics.

In each of our communities there are places that people don’t have the very basic things we all take for granted. Shelters -- for abused women/children, homeless, men’s missions -- exist in virtual every community. They are a necessary safety net for people in our communities who for an array of reasons need help. But these shelters are almost always in need of the basic items. Many of the people have had to leave everything behind, or don’t have anything to begin with.

So here's Cara's challenge: identify a local shelter or charitable organization in your local community. Ask them what they need. Check online -- they probably have a website and most have a list of what is needed at that particular time. Make a donation of basic goods, and upload a picture of your donation to the Flickr group. That's it! By doing so, you'll be eligible to win some great prizes from Cara's very generous sponsors, like fat quarter bundles, jelly rolls, quilting books, patterns, and more.

But the best prize of all will be knowing you made a difference.

My two Fat Quarterly quilts

Regarding Ms. B on the right: yes, that lone, wobbly tooth in the front has since fallen out!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had not one but TWO quilt patterns featured in issue 8 of Fat Quarterly. I wanted to show them both today in their entirety, as well as some outtakes that the kids and I had during our photo shoot!

(Quick note of clarification: issue 8 of Fat Quarterly has a paper-piecing theme, but both of my quilt patterns are traditionally pieced (i.e. easy)! Though there are several great paper-piecing projects in the issue, we wanted to be sure we still offered a variety of project types for all sewists.)

First up is my Kingdom Courtyards quilt. I made this quilt to showcase Jessica Levitt's Kingdom line, and it was on display in the Windham booth at Spring Quilt Market in Salt Lake City last year. I love this quilt pattern -- mostly for its versatility and its ability to showcase large prints -- and finally had the chance to write it up to share with Fat Quarterly readers.

Kingdom Courtyards was masterfully quilted by the uber-talented Angela Walters (who happens to have her own book coming out soon!)

My second quilt is called Double Happiness, and I made this quilt with Kate Spain's newest line, Good Fortune. The ever-talented Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works did an amazing job with the quilting. I LOVE Jackie's work -- she always seems to take what I send her to another level with her quilting choices. Thanks, Jackie!

The kids and I had a great time staging an impromptu photo shoot to get some good pictures of the quilt at a local nature center on a grey Sunday afternoon!

They're crazy ... but I love these guys!!

Can this quilt be saved?

When we were up in New York for the holidays, we had a lovely brunch at the home of one of my wife's best friends, Kim ... who also happens to be one of my good friends, since she and Mrs. Quilt Dad were college roommates when I first met them both. In fact, it was Kim who played a key role in convincing my wife to go out with me in the first place, so I guess you can say I am somewhat indebted to her!

That's why I was happy to help Kim out when she asked me for some advice ...

As we were getting ready to leave her house after brunch, she asked us to hold one for a minute while she ran upstairs to grab something. She brought down a small, folded up bundle of fabric which, when opened, revealed the well worn (and torn) baby quilt you see above.

She explained that this quilt was her husband's baby quilt, a sentimental family heirloom from his childhood that was very important to him. But, as you can see, the quilt was ... ahem, well loved. It was stained, had holes in the top, inconsistent stitching throughout, and the borders and backing were completely shredded, exposing old and worn out batting. It was wrinkled & puckered, and the colors were severely faded in the creases.

She asked if I had any thoughts or ideas of how to preserve the quilt, and although I've never tried my hand at deconstructing and reviving old quilts, I agreed to take it home with me and take a look ...

This post was originally intended to ask you all for advice, but I was so eager to dive in that I am already several steps in to the process! Here's what I've done so far:

• Completely deconstructed the quilt by picking out ALL of the quilting stitches.
• Cut off the borders and backing, and threw it all away (along with the batting).
• Hand washed and gently pressed the main panel, taking care to flatten out all of the wrinkles and puckers.
  
• Adhered a layer of thin fusible interfacing to the back of the main panel. I felt that it really needed to be stabilized because the fabric was paper thin in parts, and I was afraid it would basically disintegrate with any further handling.
• Selected a bunch of gorgeous oliver + s prints (from the City Weekend and Modern Workshop lines) to complement the panel. In my head, I was always planning on buying some 30's reproduction fabrics for this project, but the colors in these prints were a near-perfect match for the panel, and I fell in love with the idea of giving it an updated contemporary-yet-vintage vibe.
  

I've added several borders to the panels using these prints, and I am thrilled with how it looks. As soon as I can pick up some fresh batting, I'll quilt and bind it and send it back up to New Jersey so that Kim can surprise her husband with it. I hope they're happy with my approach to bringing their family heirloom back to life!

Sneak Peek | My Fat Quarterly Quilt

Tomorrow, Tuesday 1/31, issue 8 of Fat Quarterly will go on sale. I'll actually have two quilt patterns in this issue! My twins are giving a sneak peek of one of them above. I call this quilt Double Happiness, and it was made from Kate Spain's new line for Moda (Good Fortune) and it was so beautifully quilted by the talented Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works.

I'll reveal more of this quilt, as well as my other quilt from this issue, shortly. In the meantime, if you've received issue 8, I'd love to hear what you think!

Blogger's BOM | Block 5

Hello, and welcome to everyone participating in Jackie's Blogger's Block of the Month quilt-along! I've really enjoyed seeing the designs that have been posted so far, as well as all of the fantastic blocks filling the quilt-along's Flickr pool.

I'm excited to bring you January's block, the 5th block in the program. Because it looks like an hourglass, I call it the Sands of Time block. Finishing out at 8" square (8.5" unfinished), it's a quick & easy block to make -- something I thought you'd all appreciate as you catch up from the holiday rush.

Ready to get started? Here we go ... !

First, cut 8 - 1.5" x 8.5" strips from assorted prints. You don't necessarily need 8 different prints -- you can see that I used 5 prints here, and just repeated 3 of them.

Sew the strips together into two sets of 4 strips each. This will yield 2 rectangles, each measuring 4.5" x 8.5".

Find the spot along the bottom edge of your first rectangle that is 3" in from the left hand side. Mark it lightly with a pencil. Using your rotary cutter and straight-edge ruler, make a cut from the top left corner of the rectangle to your pencil mark. Repeat on the right side of your rectangle, making a slice from the top right corner to a mark along the bottom edge that measures 3" from the right side.

This sounds really confusing, but just take a look at the picture below. It's way easy, and only sounds complicated.

As you can see in the photo, you'll do the same steps with your second rectangle, but this time you'll be measuring in 3" from the left and right sides along the top edge of the rectangle, and cutting from the bottom corners.

See? It's actually very easy.

OK, from a background fabric, cut 4 rectangles measuring approximately 4" x 6". You'll see in a moment why it's not important that the measurement is exact, as long as you have enough surface area to square up the block later. If (unlike me) you're obsessive about not wasting fabric, trial & error should help you determine the exact measurement that you'll need to minimize waste.

Place your rectangle along one edge of your trapezoid as shown below, eyeballing that you have enough overhang on the top and bottom edges to allow this rectangle to "replace" the triangle you just sliced off. Again, this sounds more complicated than it really is! The pictures help ...

With right sides together, sew the rectangle to one side of the trapezoid, and press open.

With your ruler and your rotary cutter, and using the top and bottom edges of your trapezoid as a guide, trim the edges so that the height of your pieced block is back to 4.5".

Repeat these steps for the remaining 3 sides of your trapezoids. You should now have two strange looking pieced shapes that look similar to the ones in the image below:

Line up the two smallest strips and, with right sides together, sew the two pieces together. Press open. The height of the pieced block should now measure 8.5".

Now all you have to do is trim the width of the block down to 8.5". Be careful to center your block as best you can. The block should now measure 8.5" square.

And there you have it -- my scrappy Sands of Time block! I hope you enjoy making this block, and I can't wait to see all of your color and print variations. If you make a Sands of Time block, be sure to add it to the Blogger's BOM Flickr group. And, of course, I'd love it if you also added it to my Quilt Dad is my Homeboy group.

Big thanks to Jackie for asking me to be a part of this wonderful quilt-along. As a reminder, here is the full schedule of the other amazingly talented bloggers taking part in the Blogger's BOM quilt-along:

September - Sherri McConnell - A Quilting Life

October - Vicki Welsh - Field Trips in Fiber

November - Stephanie Dunphy - Loft Creations

December - Pat Sloan - The Voice Of Quilting

January - John Adams - Quilt Dad (<--------- that's me!)

February - Amy Smart - Diary of a Quilter

March - Allison Harris - Cluck, Cluck, Sew

April - Amy Lobsiger - Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts

May - Cathy Underhill - Cabbage Quilts

June - Pam Vieira-McGinnis - Pam Kitty Morning

July - Victoria Findlay Wolfe - Bumble Beans Inc.

August - Amy Ellis - Amy's Creative Side

September - Sarah Fielke - The Last Piece

October - Jackie Kunkel - Canton Village Quilt Works

October & November Quilting Bee Blocks

I've been working on getting a bunch of new things finished up and should be able to get some pictures posted soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd catch up on sharing some quilting bee blocks that I made in late 2011.

October was my last month in the do. Good Stitches charity bee. We made string x-blocks using this tutorial with bright modern scraps for the center part of each block, and any shade of grey for the background. I had a great time raiding my scrap bin for these blocks and, when all was said and done, I wound up making seven!

I had a bit of a panic attack when Amisha requested hexagons for her blocks from members of the Bee Tweet group, inspired by Rashida's quilt from the Block Party book. I had only tried making hexagons once before, for Tacha in the bee inspired quilting bee back in 2009. Let's just say that hand piecing was not my thing, and I vowed never to attempt English paper piecing again.

Lucky for me, Amisha didn't care how we made our hexagons, as long as we just made them! So, while I was at the Triangle Modern Quilting Guild retreat at Wrightsville Beach NC last fall, I cooked up my own way of completing the task. I used cardboard templates to cut and fold under the edges of the blocks, pressed the hexagons liberally, adhered the hexagons to the background fabric using fusible interfacing, and topstitched around all of the edges. I actually kind of loved making them, once I devised my own strategy to get them done. I also LOVED Amisha's palette -- Habitat prints by Jay McCarroll against a background of Moda Cross-weave in Natural.

With my group in the do. Good Stitches officially done, my only November bee commitment was for Bee Tweet. Jen (aka bettycrockerass, my favorite Twitter handle ever!) sent us all a kind of super awesome holiday assortment that wasn't red and green and traditional, but very hip and retro cool. Here's what I came up with:

Modern and improv-y log cabin variations -- my favorite kind of block.

As you can see, my quilting bee commitments slowed down towards the end of 2011, but 2012 is a new year with some new groups that I'll be playing with! Along with the continuation of Bee Tweet, here are a few new groups I'll be sewing for:

• Free Bee -- led by the always fabulous Lynne from Lily's Quilts, this group is filled with an eclectic bunch of modern quilters with an emphasis on free piecing.
• The Bee Bee -- I'm very excited about the row robin bee, where we'll all be sewing with one of my most favorite fabric lines: Melody Miller's Ruby Star Spring. (Note: The Bee Bee got its name from that fabulous large cross-stitched bee print!)
• The Traveling Quilts -- I've teamed up with my PIC (partner-in-crime) Heather to start this new group, which is kind of a new concept in virtual quilting bees. I think it's going to be GREAT (and with the likes of Jacquie, Ashley, Alissa, Monica, Amber, Elizabeth, Faith, Penny, and Kerri taking part, how can it not be??) I'm sure I'll be posting more about the Traveling Quilts in an upcoming post.

So what does that mean? Lots of great more monthly sewing (and monthly sewing posts) in 2012!

The #SSSwap

Before the holidays, I participated in one final swap for 2011: the #SSSwap (a shortened Twitter handle for Secret Santa Swap), organized by the super fun (and funny) Amy. Over 40 really talented quilters and designers signed up for this swap, in which we were free to swap anything we wanted -- handmade or not -- up to $15 in value with a secret partner.

It was great fun and a wonderful lead-in to the holidays. As you might expect, quilters and crafters also happen to be FANTASTIC gift-givers!

WHAT I GOT

I must have been a very, very good boy last year, because I was fortunate enough that Rachel pulled my name in the swap. Imagine my surprise when I opened my swap package and pulled out not one, but four gift bags!

Yes, that's one big bag for me, and a smaller bag for each one of my children! Now how thoughtful is that?! The drawstring bags were made using Jeni's great tutorial.

The smaller bags were filled with some fun goodies for the kids. (I am sure there were more things in the bag, but they made off with their bags before I could take any good photos. I tried to gather everything back up to take some pictures, but their gifts had already been cast to the dark, far corners of their rooms.)

As for my big, dad-sized bag? First, I LOVE that it was made with some of my most favoritest Joel Dewberry & Patty Young fabrics. And inside I found ...

AN AWESOME KNIT SCARF!

A NEW MUG RUN AND KNIT DISHCLOTH!

SOME FUN TOYS!!

(Including the LEGO guard at the top of the post, as well as these fun Superhero Squinkies to keep me company in my sewing room. It's not a well-kept secret that I'm kind of a LEGO and comic book nerd.)

Thank you so, so much, Rachel. Words can't really express how much I truly appreciate how thoughtful and generous you were to me and my family during the holidays.

--

WHAT I SENT

I had the pleasure of pulling together a holiday package for Elizabeth Hartman (who you probably already know from her amazing quilting blog, Oh, Fransson!) Here's what I packed up to try to surprise Elizabeth:

I also made a drawstring bag using Jeni's tutorial. I used a cheater patchwork Echino print and some solid Essex Linen for the top and interior of the bag. I also used a favorite woodgrain print by Joel Dewberry for the drawstring.

I also made this needle book, using this tutorial and some of Melody Miller's Ruby Star Spring fabric (love those bees!)

I stuck some coordinating floss and needles inside.

I hope Elizabeth enjoyed her gifts as much as I enjoyed making them for her! And I also hope there will be a #SSSwap 2 next year.