The Something For Nothing Quilt

Well, almost nothing - it did require my time, but otherwise, this string quilt is all of scraps that otherwise would have been tossed, leftovers and donations. I actually pieced and quilted it last year, set it aside for more pressing things and never got back to it until this week. I was jolted out of my inertia by a notice that Quilters Newsletter will be collecting quilts until April 30 to be sent to Japan (for more info follow this link). Good enough for me.

I save strips of fabric at least an inch wide for these quilts and foundation piece them over newsprint that wrapped my possessions for safe transit the last couple of moves. The border is fabric I bought for a charity challenge with a heart theme - yes, it has hearts on it and they are just not my usual thing so I was glad this quilt nearly finished off what was left. The batting was excess trimmed off a guild charity quilt and was headed for the trash until I retrieved it - I had to butt several pieces together to make it wide enough but it worked. The backing is some chambray my mother-in-law passed along when cleaning out her sewing stuff. I nearly passed it on as well until I realized it would work fine on the back of this quilt. The quilting thread is also from my mother-in-law. The binding is from my shoebox of leftover 2 inch strips, some of it tail ends of actual binding, others just 2 inch wide strips from other projects.

"Make it do, wear it out, use it up or do without."

Update on New Zealand Heart Quilts

My blogger friend, Shirley Goodwin, and her quilting helpers are getting much deserved press over the heart quilt project prompted by the recent New Zealand mine disaster (see this post). Check out this short video starring Shirley, the quilts and her poodles!

Retropective Thanks

It's Thanksgiving Day here in America, and it has been a pretty quiet one for me. It's been snowing - maybe 4 inches of beautiful light snow to freshen up the view - and I am home from sharing dinner with some of my church family. My contribution was a batch of yams fixed up Chinese style - simmered with slices of ginger, drained, mashed and mixed with sugar. This year has been a wild ride for me, and any thankfulness I share today is basically because the ride seems to be slowing down, and I am becoming whole again.

But the wild ride is just beginning for the families of 29 miners trapped and presumed dead in a mine in New Zealand. I'm not seeing much news coverage of this here, only know about it because of my fellow blogger and art quilter Shirley Goodwin. She is requesting heart blocks which will be made into quilts for all the families, hopefully enough for each child to receive his or her own quilt. Such a generous heart that woman has. And since my dad worked in the mines most of his life, and my brothers also did their stints underground, all without major mishap but never without the womenfolk in fear of it, how could I not answer her request. I am so thankful that I did not have to go through what those 29 families are now experiencing.

So I am quickly making up some blocks - the ones here are ready for some stitching around the applique - and slipping them into the mail. If you would like to join me, contact Shirley through Facebook where she's posted the details or through her blog, Dyeing2Design.

Here's a link to one of the more recent news stories about the disaster.