Can I Get A Whoop Whoop? The Good Fortune Quilt!

Hi, all!

I cannot believe it is Friday already - this week has just flown by in a whirlwind of activity!  If you haven't been by already this week, I've been helping my daughter out by promoting her "150 in 5 - A Giveaway With A Cause" event to help fund the adoption of our 2 and 1/2 year old Chinese grandson, Nathanael.  Nathanael, like our youngest granddaughter, is profoundly deaf.

Along the way, we've seen the beautiful necklaces she is selling, learned about adopting from China, seen "invisible red thread" quilts and learned the story behind them, explored facts about childhood deafness, cochlear implants, and American Sign Language, and yesterday Michele from Quilts From My Crayon Box did a wonderful guest post about 100 Good Wishes Quilts!  These have been unusual days for this blog, but I think the posts have been very interesting - I hope you'll check them out if you haven't already!  And I really hope you'll check out her Etsy shop or Facebook page and see if you would like to purchase a necklace to help her reach her goal of selling 150 necklaces in 5 days.  Today (Friday) is the last day for this particular promotion.  But even if you don't purchase a necklace, you can get in on the giveaway (details above) by sharing about the promotion today on social media.

OK - enough about that!  Let's do some whoop-whooping!!

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In Chinese culture, red, corresponding with fire, 

symbolizes good fortune and joy.  

A red envelope is a monetary gift 

which is given in Chinese society 

during holiday or special occasions. 

The red color of the packet symbolizes good luck.

I am calling this quilt The Good Fortune Quilt.  It will be Nathanael's first "Christmas" quilt after he finally comes home.  (I make each of my grandchildren a new quilt each Christmas, usually something that symbolizes the things were special in their lives in the past year.)  We don't know if he will be home this year for Christmas, but this quilt was ready to be made, so it's finished!

I made this quilt using the "off-cuts" from the blocks 

I made for this quilt, a slightly enlarged version 

of KarrieLyne's "Bountiful" design.  

Karrie's original was 40" square, but I sized it up to 60".  Because of that, the triangles I would have been cutting off the corners of the blocks were pretty large, and I couldn't see just throwing that fabric away.  So when I stitched from corner to corner on each block, I moved 3/8" out from that and stitched again.  When I cut between the stitched lines, I had two blocks - one for Karrie's design, and one for a future quilt, yet to be designed.

This quilt was a true family effort.  The polka dot fabric was originally given to me by my daughter, who had purchased it thinking she would make a quilt for the son they were trying to adopt from Ethiopia several years ago.  When the timeline extended so dramatically on Ethiopian adoptions, their plans changed and they had their second daughter, Emmy.  Nancy didn't foresee using the fabric, so she gave it to me.

While I was playing with the triangles left over from the first quilt, trying to come up with a design to use them, my sister and niece came for a visit.  They helped me come up with a design very similar to the finished quilt.  I was thinking the background would be the same bone color I used in the original blocks, but then my sister suggested using red to pick up the colors in the multicolored polka dot pieces.  Little did she know that I had an enormous piece of Chinese red solid that I had purchased for another project that fell through!

A little heart hand-stitched in the center of the quilt...

And so this joyful quilt was born!  Oh yes, there were some birth pains - using a bunch of different sized blocks really tested my math abilities, but I persevered and made it through!  

(Should I write up a pattern for it, do you think?)

I love the texture of the quilting!

I quilted it by stitching in the ditch (or at least near it!) around the outside of all the HST block sets, then did a small random meander in Glide Bone in those block sets and in Chinese red in the red parts.

The back is red with an aqua polka dot from Joann's, with a strip of the multicolored polka dot from the front.  The same multicolored polka dot is used for the binding.

 So….  can I get a whoop whoop?

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And one more thing - Sunday (hopefully) we will be announcing the winners of the giveaways associated with the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge 2014.  You can see all the beautiful quilts that are being linked up here - and participants, remember that you have until Saturday 6/7 at 6 pm to link up your quilts to be included in the giveaway drawings!

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And now it's your turn!

What's making you dance the happy dance this week?

Share - we want to dance right along with you!

The linky party will remain open until Sunday midnight - 

Hope to see you there!!

Hugs!

Sarah

PS - here's a small sampling of the necklaces available in Nancy's shop…