Hands2Help - Meet Carole, and Time to Check In!

Hi, all!

Welcome back to another week of Hands2Help festivities!  In addition to our guest blogger, there is a link-up party at the end of this post where you can link up and share your progress - even if all you have to share is a fabric pull or a pattern you've chosen!  Join in the fun and cheer on your fellow H2Hers!

And now I want to introduce today's guest blogger - Carole, who blogs at From My Carolina Home!  I love her blog, not only for the great quilt-y stuff she shares, but also because she posts pictures of her beautiful home state, which is also my original home state.  I may be a beach person but the Carolina mountains have a special place in my heart!  So without further ado, here's Carole's post!!

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Thank you, Sarah!  I am delighted to be a guest blogger for your readers today.   I'm Carole, and my blog is From My Carolina Home.  I blog mostly about quilting and sewing, but there are a generous number of other subjects too, like recipes to wool applique, and mountain living to gardening.  Today I want to share a technique for using your orphan blocks.  I am currently doing the Be My Neighbor quilt, and the first block was a lovely house with a tree. I pulled stash scraps and made the block in my traditional way, then decided to go a different direction for the colors. So, now I have this orphan block. It is 18-1/2 inches square, a good size to be the center of a quilt.

I also had this really cute fabric that I originally thought could be a backing.  The red color in it went great with the house, so it became the border fabric as I needed the quilt to be bigger.

So, using the cute apple farm fabric as my color inspiration, I pulled red and turquoise fabrics from stash for squares. I cut the squares 6-1/2 inches to perfectly fit the house and placed them around the edge in a pleasing pattern.

Next I added two bars of fabric at the top and bottom, one red background and one lighter with a red alphabet print, to make the quilt longer.  Both bars are 5 inches wide. The entire quilt was then bordered with the cute apple farm print about 6-1/2 inches wide.

Quilted and bound in red, it is ready to send for the Hands2Help event.  I'll be showing more details on the quilting of this quilt on my blog tomorrow.

If you have any orphan blocks, just look for some coordinating fabric and you can have a fast and easy quilt. This quilt didn't have a plan really, I just kept building on what was there. If your orphan block is 12-1/2 inches, cut your squares 4-1/2 inches to put three on each side, or smaller for more squares. This could eat up some charm squares too, if you enlarge a 12-1/2-inch center with sashing to make the it 14-inches.  Then three 5-inch charm squares will fit on each side (minus 1 inch for seam allowances - 1/4-inch x 4), with one more in each corner.  Keep adding borders until the quilt is the size you need.  The only limit is your imagination! This one finished at 42 x 61 and will go to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo as she is accepting just about any size.

Charity quilting is so important, letting those going through a rough patch know that someone does care is priceless.  Thank you, Sarah, for putting together this wonderful way to help someone smile and have a quilty hug.

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That is such a fun quilt, and what a great way to use an orphan block!  We are blessed with an abundance of orphan blocks in our quilt ministry, donated by quilters who created them and either decided they didn't want to make enough for a whole quilt, or had some left over from a project.  We've made groups of them into large quilts...

...but I've not seen a tutorial before for using one large block and building a whole quilt around it!  This is so cute, and a great way to make quick children's quilts. Thanks for sharing, Carole!

Now it's your turn to share!  Link up below and share your progress on your H2H quilt(s) - but be sure to remember that you'll also want to link up in the final linky starting on May 21st!  That's the one that we'll draw for prizes from.  

Hugs!

Sarah