CareShare

Despite having a few long-term fairly intense quilt projects underway that I work on regularly but not steadily, I frequently need a quick-sew fabric fix.   For the last 2 months I've satisfied this by a big project of 24 quilts for donation to Quilts For Kids.   The QFK Mission is:  Transforming discontinued, unwanted and other fabrics into patchwork quilts that comfort children with life-threatening illnesses and children of abuse.

My UU CareShare project is to complete 12 QFK kits, with the help of some wonderful friends, and return those to QFK along with another 12 kid quilts made by me from my stash, for a total of 24 quilts.   This is a project that has many returns and perks:

• some non-quilty friends will have a chance to engage in some basic quiltmaking (hook 'em!) 
• some quilty friends get to be quilt-fairy guides 
• I get to de-stash a LOT of kid fabrics (how did I accumulate so much???)
• I'll quilt all 24 on the long-arm giving me some excellent time bonding with Avante, improving my skills
• a little quilty party at my house on a few sew-in days with a nice pot luck lunch
•  24 sick kids will get a quilt from QFK that they can love and keep

Our first sew-in scheduled for Saturday August 13, and another on Saturday September 17.   If you want to participate, let me know and I will make room for you.  

Scorecard to meet the October 16 Sunday Service deadline:

• All 12 of my flimsies are done!  (tops, not assembled or quilted)
• 5 of those have been quilted and bound, 1 has been quilted but not yet bound
• (I actually have two or three more set up with fabrics pulled, but not cut or sewn yet - those would be 'extras')
• 1 sample flimsy made from the QFK kits

I'll keep the scorecard updated from time to time as the project progresses.   They don't all have to be done by then but that's when we report on our CareShare projects to our Fellowship so I hope to get most if not all done by then.  Here's the QFK top I stitched up last night as an example for the sew-in - happily it has pink monkeys (jumping on the bed?) on the lime background fabric:  

And if that wasn't enough,  during a great Bonnie Hunter workshop earlier this year I learned to make letters.  Well isn't that fun.   When my friend Nancy said her sister is collecting small quilts for babies who are in our local hospital I thought, gee, I can do that!   So I quick whipped up two little placemat sized quilts that said "Baby" only to learn that the size wasn't exactly what they wanted but the hospital ended up putting them to good use as covers on the premie isolettes - the lights are on 24/7 but the little quiltlets serve to block the glare so they actually ended being quite useful.   I didn't take pix of the first two but since the hospital rep sweetly said "do you think she could make some that say Bebe for our Hispanic babies?" how could I resist?   So I whipped these up:

 and will hand them over later this week.   Sweet dreams, premies, stitched with love.