What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Oh happy day, happy day!  

The weakest area of my quilting game is machine quilting. Except for a handful of times, I have quilted all my quilts. That is thirty-plus years of steady practice and I’m still not good at it! I am still trying to improve, so a couple of months ago I signed up for Susan Smith’s Freehand Quilting Masterclass (link here). So far, I’ve watched the first class and put the lesson in practice.

Believe me, I have plenty of quilt tops for these practice sessions. I dug out an old treasure from and found a hunk of leftover ...

Here is the Stairway to Heaven...

Stairway to Heaven

I really enjoyed working with these gorgeous fabrics from Island Batik Foundations.

Nature Inspired?

Stairway to Heaven was published in Annie's One Day Quilts.

One Day Quilts

Published

Choose fabrics carefully and let them do the hard work while you enjoy the compliments :-) 

Thanks to Island Batik for providing the fabrics and Thanks to Annies for publishing the pattern/quilt.

Quilt in Magazine atop the Quilt :-)

Here are some more pictures.

Lighting up my yard

Quilting ...

 I have been wanting to get back to this quilt and I finally had the chance.

When I finished the first Compassion Quilt block drive, I ended up with a handful of rail fence blocks.  I was always planning on getting them into a quilt but I needed to steal some scraps from a friend.  Finally, we sewed together a few weeks ago and I was able to dig through her brown and teal scraps and pull enough to get these last few blocks into a quilt.

It is not very big (40" square) but I don't like blocks ...

 Whew!

I made it to the end of the rail fence block drive!  I still have about 30 blocks that I will use at a later date with some leftover fabrics that coordinate beautifully.

Getting so close to the end of the Rail Fence quilts.  

These two quilts are the ones I enjoyed the most!  Gail was gracious enough to make all the blocks AND sew them into tops.  Then she put together kits with the backings and the prepared bindings.  All I had to do was load them on my machine and go!

 As promised, I have added up the rail fence blocks, counted the quilts and identified all the different layouts made in the first Compassion Quilt Block Drive.

Thanks so much to all of you that donated.  Your generosity far exceeded my expectations.

The blocks were a 5.5" simple rail fence made with 1.5" strips.  I wanted the color scheme to be gender neutral so I went with browns and blues.

 Can you believe that there are still some Rail Fence quilts to be completed?

For this quilt, I just alternated the direction of the blocks. 

I still had quite a few blocks left and this layout requires the most blocks - 168 to be exact.

 I am doubling up on the finishes today!

First up is the tenth finish using the rail fence blocks.

In my last post regarding these quilts, I shared that someone had included a great light-colored fabric in with their blocks.  I used half of the fabric for the horizontal sashing on the first quilt and now the rest has been used as the sashing between these blocks.

 Yep!  I have more Compassion Quilts to share this week.  These two finishes are all made with blocks donated by some of you.  Can you believe we are already up to 9 finished quilts?!

I found another yard cut of a light tan solid in my stash so I made another "boston commons" layout.

One yard is just enough to cut the strips needed at 3"and have enough left over for the binding.

Do you see your blocks?

 Slowly getting the bindings sewn onto the Compassion quilts.  

I have two more to share with you today!

In my attempt to try and make these look a little different, I sewed some blocks into fours and then added some sashing and cornerstones.

I think most of the blocks in this quilt came from one person.  They had a lot of very similar blocks so I was able to join those together.  I then had to select other blocks to finish out the quilt. I chose blocks with a light fabric on the edge so there was nice contrast to ...

 Quite a few of you have asked me if I will be doing more block drives for the Compassion Quilts I am currently working on.

The answer is YES!

My plan is to do four block drives a year.  They will be announced in March, June, September and December.   Each March will be the month that we will be making quilts for our veterans.  And once a year we will focus on blocks for kids - I am thinking that will be in September.

The current block drive is these cute blue/brown rail fence blocks made from 1.5" wide ...

 First, I want to thank everyone who has sent in blocks - my mailbox is stuffed every day!

Second, I want to let you know that I have decided to just call these quilts that will be donated to my local hospital Compassion Quilts.  I think that sounds so much better!

Today I have two more rail fence finishes to share.

The first one is a lovely version with just the blocks alternating in direction.  Do you see your blocks?

Here is another view of all those pretty blocks.

 I have realized I am going to have a lot of finishes to share each month so I thought I would start sharing my hospital project finishes mid-week.  It has been a flurry of activity this week!

Rail Fence finish number two is one of my favorite layouts to make.  I call it a ripple effect where you start in the middle and then each section of blocks is framed with a solid.

I think most of the blocks used to make this quilt were donated by 3 or 4 people. 

 I see some of mine in there too!

On ...

 Here it is...The first of the quilts made for the hospital using the rail fence blocks!

Let me say first, that one of the objectives in making these donation quilts is I really wanted to use up some of my older fabric. So I started out with designs that needed some of the brown fabrics I have in my stash.

The rail fence blocks in this first quilt were all made out of my stash.  I decided to make just a horizontal design using blocks and an older rusty leaf fabric I had that I knew I would never ...

 I am blown away by how many of you have contacted me to say they made blocks for my donation quilt project.  The blocks are now coming in daily and I am sorting them into little stacks for future designs.  I have already made one quilt (that I hope to share on Friday) and the second top is just about complete.

 This week seemed to fly by so fast.  I feel like I should have a lot more to show for it - but this is all the scrap sewing I did.

I made this single 16 patch block for a future donation quilt.

 A few weeks back, I mentioned that I have been organizing a little something behind the scenes and that I would be sharing it soon.  I keep running into a few obstacles, but I think I am going to go ahead and let you know what I am up to.

Since the start of the pandemic, I have been evaluating what is important to me and what I want to focus on in the future.  I am working less on my "day job" so how do I want to fill my spare time.  That is why I decided to finally ...

 I keep finding tempting scraps in my sewing room and before you know it, I started another quilt.