Thursday, September 24, 2009

CinCHouse Charity Quilt is complete!

The background is I belonged to an online military family/friend support website called CinC House. It was a great comfort and resource for me when DH deployed and provided me with a network of friends who just "understood" when I needed someone.

Sometimes, their friendship was the only one I sought because it was nicer to have that common thread, regardless of the fact that we didn't talk about it all the time. We talked about kids, food, life... all the things a group of women can talk about.

One of those things involved our creative outlets and a few of us were fledgling quilters/sewers. I wanted to do a QOV top or a charity quilt of some sort and realized, this would be a great way for us to all be involved so I posted the idea that participants created a block. From there, I'd add sashing and the quilting.

This was almost 2 years ago. It took almost a year for everyone who committed to this to provide the blocks and another year for me to feel my quilting skills were up to par with doing justice to the pieced top. I wanted/needed it to be good enough. So I waited.

Time marched on and I always had an excuse. My husband started working with wounded soldiers and one day received a call from a mother of a soldier who needed to be involved with something.

He is a paralized soldier and has been down with all the struggles. His mother was struggling, too. Hubby asked if I thought I could make him a quilt. I agreed and pondered appropriate designs which would suit what I felt would mean the most for his situation and all of a sudden, the CinC quilt popped into my head. I asked the group if they agreed we should scrap our original plan of sending to auction as a fund-raiser and instead, provide it to this soldier. I am so happy to say their agreement was quick and completely supportive.

I do not have a picture, but the label reads: "Dear ____, thank you. Thank you for your service and bravery. You are and will always have the love of countless nameless and faceless citizens. With all the warmth, gratitude and prayers for healing and strength that can be sent to you and your family, the quilting members from CinCHouse.com."

The quilt itself and quilting are pictured here. I love this adapted quilting pattern! I wish I had time, I'd love to send his mother a quilt as well but do not have a "spare top" to quilt up really fast to send along this week. I might just include a card thanking her. It's one of those situations where they have small & limited resources, even though they have much love and faith. I'd like her to know she also has prayers and love.

Anyway, that's the story and here's the quilt I'm pretty dang proud of! GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.!









Saturday, September 5, 2009

This weekend will be about quilting

Aside from life, I have been plugging away in the quilting world. At my kids' football practices, I've found the perfect time to bind quilts.

This one

which is from before my blog days, is being bound now. I will provide a full write up on it once it's complete & washed. Then you can see my quilting pattern, also, which I L-O-V-E.

More recently, I finished quilting and it is waiting to be bound is this one.

I will not show a fully quilted shot of it yet, only leave you with this teaser.

This pink one has a home and every stitch has love and rememberences of a beautiful lady lost to breast cancer. When I get the label on, I'm going to make sure her daughter and grandaughter know who inspired this one as I worked on it as an OST mystery.

Finally, I'll be cutting the fabrics for this one today.

Baby Kyle was born on Aug. 8 and I still haven't decided if I'll send this ahead or wait until we have a "girls weekend visit" after the holidays but either way, I had best get it completed! It's designed by me but now I have to go do the not-so-fun part of figuring out sizes to cut the pieces. Wish me luck!