Blogger's Quilt Festival

I was looking back over the quilts I've made this year and realized that there's only one that I really really love, but I entered it in the quilt festival last time. So, inside of looking for a quilt I really loved, I instead tried to find a quilt I was proud of having made, and it's this charity quilt.


My brother-in-law asked me a few months ago if I'd be willing to make and donate a quilt for a silent auction his neighborhood was putting together to raise money for a boy with cerebral palsy. Since I only started quilting in January, I haven't had many opportunities for charity projects and thought this would be a great way to give back. After all, my family has been the recipient of some wonderfully charitable people over the years.

I set out to find a design that would work well with the jellyroll I planned to use. I ended up finding three designs that I liked and worked to fuse them together.


I wanted the back to be pieced so there would be more versatility to the quilt, thinking maybe someone would want to bid on it more if they could almost get two quilts out of one. So I sketched out the back...


and was able to break out of my "single fabric collection shell" a little bit by adding some fabrics from my stash that coordinated nicely - a good exercise for me.


I liked how some of the cuts came together to make a design I hadn't anticipated.


And I worked hard to improve my skills, carefully quilting and binding the quilt, forcing myself to take more care since I wanted it to be of good enough quality that someone would want to bid on it.

All in all, I'm really proud of this quilt. Not because I love the design, but mostly because I tried harder to do a better job to make a product that someone would want to own.