About a month ago, I told Bea Lee I would pattern test for her. I thought I would get out of the hospital sooner then I did, but I didn't. When this weeks Project Quilt Challenge came out, I had been laying in the hospital for a few days and had finally come home to my Tshirt knit sheets. I love them! Then I pulled out a T-shirt Quilt I needed to make. Then I thought of how heavy that quilt would be and wasn't sure if I would have the energy or ability yet to quilt it. I looked up in the corner of my sewing room and saw my yarn basket and my mind then thought about Bea's pattern and knew it was perfect!! Her pattern is called "Shelves Full of Yarn" and that's what the quilt looks like!
I have plenty of scraps already sorted by color, so that made it easy. I even used scraps for many of the squares. I actually figured out how to do a lot of this sitting down and ironing sitting down. Not something I do much of. I am a very active person. But sewing is my stress relief and I was soooo glad to be back in my sewing room.
The pattern was written well and honestly worked on my mound of scraps. I made one change with mine and used a piece of fabric as the base to sew down too. My go too preferred method, not a must. The snowball blocks and 9 patches went together pretty quickly since my scraps were already sorted. Once the blocks were done, the top went together quickly.
Since my new Juki broke during the last challenge, I wasn't able to use it to FMQ, and I knew my Janome was more work. So I decided to do straight line quilting, something I don't always love, but was needed today. I decided to use the angle of the snowball blocks and quilt on the angle. I quilted straight lines about a 1/2 inch on the outside and inside of the snowballs and all the way across the nine patches. I kinda like how it turned out.
This quilt is going to be given to a little girl who was diagnosed with cancer at the same time I was having surgery. My biggest motivation in life is making others happy. The motivation to give a girl a quilt has helped me so much in the last week. I am so thankful for Project Quilt this week!!!
