Thank You, Susan

During a quilt guild show-and-tell, I displayed a couple of my leader/ender quilts and explained my motivation to send quilts to Nepal.  Afterward, Susan approached me and expressed a desire to create a few simple tops as gifts for the children living in the Nepal home.

 This I Spy quilt will be fun for four-year-old Grace who has Downs Syndrome. I can just imagine the hours she will enjoy identifying all of the colorful pictures!

 My grand-daughter, Lois, loves this sweet 30's print medallion style quilt and picked it to go to Ganga, who is thirteen and in fifth grade at her school in Kathmandu. I quilted it with a simple loopy pattern.

 Kashiram, who uses a wheel chair due to his disability, will enjoy sleeping under this happy quilt each night. Susan did a great job of creating a sweet quilt using a simple design and just a few fabrics that she had on hand.

 It has been my joy to organize an effort to bless some dear ones living on the other side of the world. Thank you, Susan, for coming along side of me. 

 My husband and son have made it back home from a successful medical mission to Nepal and delivering the quilts. I'm hoping to soon have more photos of the kids with their quilts.

Lisa's Quilts

 Quilters are some of the most generous people in the world. I see it all the time, don't you?
Lisa is the perfect example, stepping up when she heard that I was wanting to gift quilts to sixteen children in Nepal.These are the fabulous creations she handed to me one evening before a quilt guild meeting.

 This Plus and X quilt was not a quick quilt to create and yet Lisa was happy to give it to Bijay, a young boy disabled in the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. 

 I'm betting that fourteen year old, Milan, is loving this improv quilt as much as I do. Lisa is an art teacher and her quilts are an expression of her talent.

 This third gifted quilt is made with hand-dyed fabrics and Lisa told me that she would like for the quilt to be given to someone very special. My daughter-in-law and I decided to pass the beautiful quilt, which is a bit larger than all of the others, to Bikash and his wife, Bijata. The young Nepali couple have the responsibility of caring for the kids who live at P. G.

 Lastly, I want to feature a couple of lap size quilts given by my friend, Patty. The Kansas dugout top as well as the modern liberated top, both pieced by Sharon, were beautifully quilted by Patty and passed along for the kids. I made the quilt on the right below using a pattern by Cindy, LiveaColorfulLife. 

I'm excited to have been given a photo of two of the lap quilts, at home with their new owners, Raj and Sanu. Both boys are wheelchair bound and will enjoy having warm wraps. That handsome guy on the right is my son, Drew.

My next post will feature the last three quilts for the Children's Home.  Thanks for taking a look!

Candy Box Sampler

If quilt blocks were chocolates, it would be difficult to pick just one favorite from this box of deliciousness!

 Once again, I am featuring blocks created by my friend, Sharon, and generously gifted to me by her family following her death. Each one is uniquely modern in style and color choice. I do not know the pattern source. If you recognize the designer, please let me know.

Sharon had already started sashing the blocks with light grey solid on two sides. Staggering the blocks this way is a fun setting for the six inch blocks. 

By adding a darker grey border and wide strip to separate some of the rows, I was able to lengthen the quilt to 80 inches, long enough to cover a child's cot at P. G.

Mod quilting with a light grey thread and backed with bright green print, I was very tickled with how this quilt turned out....perfect for a thirteen year old girl named Somati.

Festivity

This easy Bohemian quilt is a cinch to make...perfect recipe for a quick charity project.

I used a layer cake of Amy Butler fabric plus some random fabrics from my stash with similar style. Each ten inch square was simply cut in half to create rectangles and then pieced into rows.

My friend, Sue, offered to quilt this project to help me meet my deadline for sending it to Kathmandu. What a blessing to have quilty friends who stepped forward to help. Eleven year old Shristika is blessed as well!

International Sampler

The blocks in this sampler quilt date back seven years to 2011. They were traded through an online quilting bee organized on Flickr. Remember Flickr? 

They had been sitting in a bag on my UFO shelf just waiting to see the light of day again. The 12 orange and aqua blocks were made by quilters from many states in the US as well as several countries and sent to me to put together. In return, each of them received a block from me in the colors they had chosen. Turning them on point, and adding solid aquas from my stash along with a grey/white stripe, I was able to stretch the blocks into a 60"x 80" quilt. 

The mod square quilting makes for a cozy texture when washed and dried. Laxmi, a thirteen year old teenage girl who is disabled because of a leg amputation, will be the new owner of this colorful quilt created by people from around the world. I love thinking about the many hands touching these fabrics which were mailed to me in Kansas City and then carried by my husband to Kathmandu, Nepal and put into Laxmi's hands!

The International Sampler contains blocks made in New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, and the USA--from the states of Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, California, Arizona, North Carolina, Missouri and New York. Maybe you spy a block that you created for me back then. Laxmi and I thank you! 

Half-Way-Around-the-World

 Like the last quilt that I featured on Wednesday, this quilt was made using blocks beautifully pieced by my friend, Sharon. Because I didn't have enough blocks for a Trip-Around-the-World, it seemed appropriate to make a Half-Way-Around quilt as it is traveling to Nepal on the other side of the globe.

 Since the recipient, Pratik, is visually impaired I added prairie points to the edges of the center pieced panel for some sensory texture.

 I enjoyed free-handing some beaded chain quilting on the purple grunge fabric along each side. The center of the quilt is stitched with loopy quilting. 

Working with fabrics and blocks from another quilter's collection has been fun as has been the creative challenge of using what I had to enlarge the projects.

Chipper

Tula Pink designed a fun fabric line called "Chipper". All of the prints in this maze styled quilt are from that line of fabric. Each block was pieced by my friend, Sharon, before she passed away from breast cancer. I was able to enlarge the collection into a 60"x80" quilt by adding the solid charcoal grey and lower dotty border after assembling the blocks into a square.

The setting idea came from seeing a quilt named "Twinkle" in Deborah Fisher's book "Quilt Giving".  Since my beginning center square measurements were different than Deborah's instructions, I sort of free-handed the grey solid triangles to get it to my desired size. 

 I also tried, a new-to-me all over quilting motif for the Chipper top. The mod rectangles were a lot of fun to create and add a wonderful texture to the quilt.

The more modern design of this quilt seems appropriate for 14 year-old Tila who will be receiving her quilt in the next few days.