As planned, I cut borders and finished this quilt top today. It took less than an hour this morning. I took it to show our Project Linus group this afternoon.
Here's a close up of a corner, so you can see the border fabrics I added to Mrs. N's original top.
I've never met Mrs. N, but I know she's a kind, generous woman. She donates a few tied quilts to Project Linus almost every month. I see how she lovingly uses the bits of fabric she has. However, her fingers are not as nimble nor her eyes as sharp as they used to be and her quilts don't meet Project Linus' quality standards.
I know Mrs. N does her very best work for Project Linus and really wants to help comfort children. My heart aches because I cannot put a Project Linus label on her blankets and give them to a child. Part of the Project Linus mission is to provide a rewarding and fun service opportunity and I hope we are fulfilling that for Mrs. N.
I recently had two blankets from Mrs. N with nice, heavy white flannel on the back. I decided to deconstruct the blankets to reclaim the flannel, perhaps to use as "batting" in a blanket. The ties were easy to clip. The handstitching on the binding was a bit stubborn in spots. The machine stitching on the binding easily pulled out.
The fabrics in the top began talking to me. With the layers of the quilt separated, I started pulling the seams apart. The sewing machine tension was off just enough that little effort was needed. Free up an inch or so of thread and then pull the rest of it out in one piece.
This is a Quiltathon weekend, according to JudyL at Patchwork Times. Right after "Sewing With Nancy", I headed to my quilting area. I separated the rectangles in each strip and trimmed each one, straightening the sides and squaring the corners. I did a couple of strips at a time, trimming, then stitching the rectangles back into strips, to somewhat preserve the way Mrs. N made the top.
When all 16 strips were nice and straight, I did a bit of reordering of the strips and started stitching them together. I found a maroon print and cut 2" strips for sashing between sets of 4 pieced strips. This added 4½" to the length.
Tomorrow, our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group meets. I'll cut border strips and complete the top. The inner border will be the same fabric as the sashing and I found a print with a blue background for the outer border. With the sashing and borders, it will be a bit larger than the original 36" x 42" size.
It feels good to remake this quilt so it can comfort a child.
What makes this finished blanket notable is that I not only finished it, I did all of the stitching on it. These days, I'm mostly finishing blankets that someone else started.
The pre-printed quilt panel, batting and backing fabric were in a bag of give-away fabric that a friend, Jesse, brought to a quilt retreat last September. This and a few pieces of fabric came home with me for Project Linus blankets.
I put the layers together pillowcase-style in mid-October and started quilting. A few days later I became a Project Linus coordinator and this cute blanket went to the bottom of my to-do pile. It would probably still be there except the Greater KC Project Linus chapter divided into 2 smaller chapters 5 weeks ago.
With my smaller PL chapter, I'm no longer picking up blankets in Kansas. For now, all incoming blankets wind up in the hands of my able assistant, Louise, and she does the quality control and blanket labeling. This allowed me to get to the bottom of my stack of blankets needing more quilting. Not that I'm caught up on everything else yet. Is anyone ever caught up on everything? Sounds boring.
It was thrill to finally finish this blanket this morning, about 6 months after starting it. I did a little happy dance.
Sometimes there's a reason for waiting, though you may not know the reason until after you wait.
Yesterday I planned to do my weekly shopping. Didn't happen. My get up and go was MIA. This afternoon I forced myself to shopping, because no way do I want to be in the weekend shopping crowd. I'm retired and Friday afternoon is a stupid enough time to be shopping, thank you.
I stopped at Michaels to spend the 50% off coupon the cash register spit out last Saturday. I was amazed to find several skeins of dark sage Red Heart Super Saver on clearance for $1.49 each. I bought 5 skeins, 4 for Project Linus and one to make hats for charity. I got a pound of white yarn with the 50% coupon.
The Red Heart Super Saver was not marked down Sunday when I was using the 50% off coupon from the newspaper ad. Several more expensive yarns were on clearance Sunday and were still there today with a dwindling selection. But Super Saver at that price disappears quickly.
Today was good timing. Yesterday the Super Saver might not have been on clearance. I'm glad I didn't do my shopping yesterday.
Yesterday, I was sitting in front of the television trying to convince myself to get up and work on my Project Linus "to do" list. The problem was, the top of that list was shortening 4 fleece blankets, which I really didn't want to do. I realized that if I waited for motivation to shorten those blankets, I'd sit in front of the TV until mid-afternoon and then spend the rest of the day on the computer.
Instead, I sewed labels on a few blankets. Then I put 10 blankets in a clear bag ready to deliver and out of the way. I stopped to watch "Knit and Crochet Today" on the Create channel and even spent 5 minutes on the exercise bike while watching. After the show ended, the motivation to shorten those fleece blankets arrived and that got done.
Prospective Project Linus coordinators are told that part of their job is quality control. That is, making sure blankets are well made and suitable for children. Usually, no one mentions is how much time you can spend working on blankets that someone else made and donated.
I've whined before about the inconsistent quality of fleece blankets, depending on the experience level of the makers. The blankets I shortened were made with about a yard of fleece and fringed on all 4 sides. The center area (not including the fringe) was about 27" by 48", not good dimensions for a blanket. I shortened the blankets to about 27" x 36" plus fringe, a usable size for toddlers.
Quilts or fabric blankets that I can add some stitching or some ties to hold the layers properly are easy to complete. What frustrates and pains me are afghans that have short yarn ends -- they will come apart with use; it's just a question of how soon. And fabric blankets that are poorly constructed and not worth de-constructing to reclaim the material. I don't want a child's favorite blankie to fall apart or become a lumpy, tattered mess after a few washings.
When I look at some of the donated blankets, I wonder what the maker was thinking. My mom suggested that they made something, then looked for something to do with it and decided to give it to Project Linus. That would explain some of these blankets. They weren't made with Project Linus in mind.
One of the blankets in the group I was checking on Saturday was a wonderfully soft crocheted blanket. A nice blanket, but it was about 24" wide and 36" long. A good width for a preemie blanket but way too long. This morning I frogged the edging and about 12" of the length and put a new edging on. A couple of hours of work and I have a nice soft preemie blanket and some yarn.
There are 2 blankets made by sewing together squares. The squares are made on a loom like you make potholders on. You wrap yarn around the pegs, both up and down and side to side. Then you wrap/tie yarn around all the intersections. The squares in these 2 blankets have 6 layers of yarn, nice and thick. Especially the one made with bulky yarn.
Each of these blankets is made from 30 squares and are about 25" x 30", not including the loops around the outer edge. Where the squares are sewn together, the loops stand up on the top of the blanket. A baby-sized blanket in a design that is totally wrong for a baby.
A row of 5 squares was removed from the above blanket before I took the picture. I'm sure the yarn is Red Heart Super Saver, probably 3 or 4 skeins worth. Undoing the squares is time consuming, but the yarn will be great for a knit or crochet blanket.
I have help taking care of all the blankets and I'm very grateful for those trusted volunteers. But it's a very small group and I feel it is only fair that I do my share. I just need to remember how to find motivation and get started on a list of unappealing tasks.
March 2009 became an exciting month for Project Linus in the greater Kansas City area. After a year off, former Greater Kansas City Area chapter coordinator PattyG is back as a chapter coordinator. The Greater Kansas City Area Chapter of Project Linus is no more. In its' place we have 2 Project Linus chapters, each covering 3 counties in the greater KC area (6 counties total are covered).
It's been a busy couple of weeks working out details, dividing the email list, etc. PattyG has started a website for her chapter at http://www.orgsites.com/mo/kansascityprojectlinus/. I will replace the Greater Kansas City chapter website at http://kcprojectlinus.home.att.net with a new design for my chapter, the Jackson/Clay/Platte Counties, MO chapter which includes Kansas City, MO. I want to keep most of the information on the old website, so it is taking a while to create the new website.
Our 3rd Sunday blanket group met at JoAnns in Independence last Sunday. Louise, Debby, Jodie, Ruth and I were there. Debby arrived with a beautiful Granny Ripple afghan to turn in.
Jodie sorted and matched 9" fabric strips into kits for Bars quilts. Jodie and Louise both stitched squares into quilt tops. I brought my bow-tie blocks that I started on National Make a Blanket Day and finished making the 24 blocks. I still have to stitch blocks together and decide on a border.
Debbie and Ruth tied quilts. We had volunteers from a local group (I didn't catch the name) help for about an hour. With the extra hands, 9 quilts were tied. This is the stack I took home. Debby's Granny Ripple is on the bottom of the stack for a total of 10 blankets.
We recently received a donation of 5 twin-size quilt tops. Three of them are log cabin blocks set together with sashing strips and 3 borders. Those will be finished as twin size quilts, eventually.
One of the last 2 twin-size tops is a pinwheel design and the other is triangle squares. Both were set together block to block with a single, plain white border.
Louise and I spread both of these quilt tops out and decided that we wanted to remove the borders, split the blocks into 2 smaller tops and add more colorful borders. It was about 3:30 and Jodie volunteered to start ripping seams. By 4:00, we had 2 smaller triangle square tops ready for borders.
Jodie agreed to take the pinwheel top home and apply the seam ripper to it. A big thanks to Jodie and her seam ripper. Louise and I were definitely not excited about ripping out all those seams.
Louise took the triangle squares home and called Monday to say she had found fabric in her stash that went great with it. There is plenty to border both of the smaller tops we made from the twin-size top.
I made an effort this month to not take any donated blankets that needed work to make them meet my current standards. 10 days ago, I had a big bag of fleece blankets that needed work. I was moaning about that, but didn't want to bring them to our 3rd Sunday group. I felt the group needed a break from that sort of blanket making. This wonderful woman named Louise offered to take them off my hands. She needed something to help keep the grandkids entertained while they were on spring break this past week. Thank you, Louise!
