Hands2Help - It's Time To Show Off Your Quilts!!!

"What does love look like?

It has the hands to help others.

It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy.

It has eyes to see misery and want.

It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.

That is what love looks like."

St. Augustine             .

Hi, all!

The time has finally arrived for the final linky party for the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge 2016!  I am overwhelmed with gratitude for each one of you, who have become the hands, feet, eyes and ears of love once again through the quilts you have made for others!  Your quilts will bless many, and hopefully you have found blessing in the making of them.  Many of you have told me that this is your first experience making charity quilts - I hope it won't be your last!  Thanks to each and every one of you for joining in the Challenge this year!

So let's get down to business.  Between now and next Saturday, May 28th at 12:00 noon CST, please link up your quilts below, either to a new blog post or an old one that shows your quilt.  If you don't have a blog, you can link up a picture you have posted in the Flickr group.  (If you post your pic in the Flickr group, be sure to put your name and which charity you made the quilt for in the description!)  If you are technologically challenged, feel free to email your picture to me at salliesue57 (at) gmail (dot) com and I will post it in the Flickr group and link it up for you!

The best reason to link up your quilt is so that we can all see, admire, and be inspired by each one. But there's another reason, too - thanks to a lot of wonderful donors, we have great giveaway items!!  To participate in the giveaway, just link up your quilt or quilts.  Everything will be given away by random drawing from those who link up a finished quilt!

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So now - it's time to link up your finished (or very nearly so) quilts!  The link will remain open until Saturday, May 28th at 12:00 noon CST. You can link up from your old or new blogpost, from a picture of your quilt posted in the Flickr group, or for the technologically challenged, you can email me a picture of your quilt at salliesue57 (at) gmail (dot) com and I will post it in the Flickr group and link it up for you.  You can email me at that same address with any questions you might have, or if you still need the addresses for mailing your quilts.  (And if life has happened to you and you're having trouble finishing your quilt, please email me before next Saturday!)

Winners should be announced next Sunday, May 29th. But please bear with me, it may be late in the day - it's a big undertaking!

I'm so excited to see the wonderful quilts you have made - and I hope you're all just as excited to see the quilts the other participants have made! Please take the time to visit all the link-ups and give each other a big high-five - you've done amazing work!!!  

Ready - - - set - - - GO!!!

Hugs!

Sarah

FYI - some people are having trouble linking up, which results in multiple entries.  Don't sweat it - I have contacted LinkyTools about it already, but I will also be monitoring it and will delete any duplicate entries.  And if you just can't get it to link up, email me at salliesue57 (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll link up for you.  Smile!!

PS - the pictures above are some of H2H 2015's quilts - aren't they wonderful?

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? New Duds For The Grands, and a Winner!

Hi, all!

Welcome to Friday!!!  It's been a long week, and a weird one here - after lovely warm spring weather, we went back to cool and rainy - bummer!  But it's starting to warm back up and hopefully we'll be past our little spurt of "blackberry winter"!  So - - - are you ready to get your whoop whoop on?  Let's go!

Looking ahead to warmer weather, I made a couple of outfits for my granddaughters from this adorable fabric...

Both girls are HUGE Shopkins fans - Lilli has had them for a while now, and Emmy got some of her very own for her birthday - she was hugely excited!  So when my daughter spotted this fabric at Joann's recently, she promptly texted her mama to make sure that the littles would have something handmade from it!

I don't know about you, but I think they like them!

Lilli is getting so big, and is very much her own person!

Of course, our little model had to pose appropriately to show off her outfit well!

And don't think that Nathanael was left out - he got a new Spiderman t-shirt in his favorite color, red!

So can I get a whoop whoop??

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Hmmm, seems like I'm forgetting something.... oh yeah!  We need a winner for the Crafted Appliqué giveaway!!  

So I consulted Little Miss Random, and she chose....

Monica also hates zippers but she may have gotten past it by making a zipper-heavy bag, and she wanted to know if the next commenter was a traditional or modern quilter!  Congratulations, Monica - Lara will be mailing a signed copy of Crafted Appliqué directly to you!  Expect an email from me hooking you and Lara up so you can give her your mailing info....

And if you didn't win this copy or any of the others so far in the giveaway, here's a reminder that (a) this is a great book that you will want to own, and (b) if you buy a copy, and then win a later giveaway on the hop, Lara will refund your purchase price!  That's a win/win if I ever heard one!

Whoop whoop!!

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And now it's your turn!

What's got you whooping it up this week?

What's making you do a little happy dance?

Share - because we want to dance with you - 

And it's always more fun to dance with friends!

The party will stay open until Sunday midnight - 

Hope to see you there!

Hugs!

Sarah

I May Have A Scrap Problem... Using Them Up In Style!

Hi, all!

Well, after Monday night's little internet debacle, I decided to go to Starbucks this morning, camp out on their internet, and upload all the pictures I would need for this blogpost at the same time I finished Monday's post.  There's more than one way to skin a cat!  If only using up my insane stash of scraps was as easy.....

But I have made some headway this week!  I made a cute and easy quilt that gobbled up a lot of scraps - someone on Instagram called it Scrap-Eater!  That feels so "Lord of The Rings" - like naming a sword or something! But I like to call this the Gum Wrapper quilt, also suggested by several Instagram and Facebook readers.  

So here's how this quilt came about.  When I started looking at that tub of blue scraps, I realized I had a lot of long strings that were between two and five inches wide.  Last year, after Joanne posted this tutorial as part of Hands2Help 2015, I cut a bunch of yellow scraps into 1.5" x 2.5" and 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles, then tucked them away in a tub where they had been languishing ever since.  So I cut up my blue strings into the same sizes, sewed a light and a dark of the smaller size together (that makes a 2.5" square) and started fiddling around with design ideas....

When I posted them on IG and Facebook, the one that grabbed everyone's attention was the last one - the blocks set on point with a subtle chevron design.

You can see here how the blocks are laid out to achieve the chevron.  This is a direct steal from Crazy Mom Quilts, whose chevron quilt design is one of my favorites.  I hate making half square triangles, and her method makes it so easy and fast!!

Then, in a moment of clarity, I realized that it was going to take over 900 of those little 2.5" squares to make this quilt!  Oops - back to the drawing board.... Because I had the larger rectangles too, I experimented on the design wall with throwing some of the larger pairs in too.  With these sizes, two 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles sewn together yields a 4.5" block. 

I liked the way this looked, and it would be easy to accomplish, because coincidentally, four of the 2.5" blocks sewn together four-patch style also yields a 4.5" block!  

So I started playing around on EQ7 and came up with this design...

...which translated into this on the wall...

...which grew into this as I made more of those tiny blocks to make it larger....  (don't worry, I moved that upper left larger block - everyone commented on it and now it's in the middle of the quilt!)

And after four (yes, FOUR) bobbins of thread and a whole lot of piecing, this was the result!

Isn't that purty???  And I'm happy to say, I managed to get it quilted and bound this afternoon, so here's the finished quilt...

...and the back, which is a favorite IKEA print I had in the stash!

I'd love to be able to tell you just how many of those 2.5" blocks are in this quilt, but I keep losing count.  I think there are 120 of the sets of four, which would mean 480 2.5" blocks, and there are (I think) 61 of the larger 2-bar 4.5" blocks.  I kept having to make more, so obviously my math skills were sadly lacking on this one.  But it ended up being about 53" square, a nice size for a lap quilt!  And made completely out of my stash, so this is another one for Sew My Stash 2016!!

So that's what I've been doing with my scraps this week!  Have you been making any headway with yours?  Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out looking striking.  I love the idea of leaders and enders (even though I don't do that!) because when you get ready to sew them together you can sometimes be surprised what you manage to create from bits and bobs that took no time away from the projects you were working on. This particular quilt would make a great leaders and enders project!

Keep plugging away at those scraps, and let's tame our scrap monsters together!!!

Hugs!

Sarah