May Showers

It’s time to share out our finishes.

Click this LINK to see how everyone did in the month of May.

My self-imposed challenge was to take these (donated to me) flannel scraps and create ONE baby quilt to “donate it forward” to Birthchoice.

I was able to make THREE.

Besides Elm Street Quilts, a big motivator was a Baby Shower invitation that appeared in our church bulletin. A neighboring church was holding the event for Birthchoice. Perfect! Attending a fun party and saving me a trip out to deliver the quilt myself? Win Win. So I got busy and used up all the pieces I brought home, filling in with more of my own. Win Win.

I started by laying out those different sized blocks that had already been pieced. Their sizes made no sense, and I couldn’t trim them down to get uniformity. If I did, the overall size would shrink way too small, and I was going for at least a 40 by 40 inch quilt square.

I eventually figured it out.

Next, I made a rag quilt, my first. I didn’t have to figure out a layout this time, just finish what someone else had started:

Last, my friend saw what I was doing and wanted to get in on the action. She gave me this panel and I quilted it up, using the last of the donated flannel for the back:

My favorite thing about this third one is the binding. At first I couldn’t find anything that matched those pastel colors. Then I remembered seeing them on some old marimekko scraps I had:

Aren’t they cute? The colors were “off”, so although I tried, I couldn’t seem to find ways to use them up. Even so, I never could part with them. The longer I hold on to something, the harder it becomes to let it go. I don’t think time adds value, but now I’m very glad I didn’t purge them with the rest of my spring cleans. As a scrappy binding, they were the only thing I had that worked.

All finished and freshly washed in plenty of time for the shower:

In one month, this:

Turned into these:

Win win.