The 8,000 Orphan Block Challenge

For the fourth year in a row now, the sewing machines of Holy Trinity’s quilters and our friends continue to hum as we sew quilt blocks and tops to send to Quilts for Survivors for residential school survivors. Several of the quilt tops we make are also hand quilted throughout the year and delivered with our fall shipment (last year we shipped 41 quilts and flimsies and 34 16-inch blocks). These quilts are a symbol of support, respect and love for those who have undergone the trauma of attending a residential school.

This year, we’re also joining in on a fun new challenge. Quilts for Survivors are asking for donations of orphan blocks – you know, those projects that somehow never made it to the finish line and are now tucked into bags and boxes around the house. 8,000 in total! They will be transformed into quilts of comfort, healing and love.

Any and all sizes of blocks are welcome as long as they are made of 100% cotton. As usual, we are asked to avoid fabric with religious symbols, school-related imagery, travel motifs or graphic content as they may be triggering or inappropriate for survivors.

The bulk of the blocks will be accepted in June at Quilt Canada in Winnipeg but they have already started accepting them by mail and have received over 2,000 to date, a terrific start! (These little guys are less than 6".)

Our current orphan block count at Holy Trinity is 64 and we would love to see it grow. The blocks you see are a combo of mine and donations from some of the gals at the church. I'm hoping to collect a few additional hidden treasures from my quilting peeps to add to the total so that can include them in our fall shipment. If you have orphans that you would like to send to a good home, check out this Facebook post.

I been keep my orphans in a little basket and have dug most of them out to send, but, of course felt that this might be a chance to make blocks smaller than the 16" size that they usually request. You know, just to get them out of my system. 

I've been wanting to try a spool block for ages, so I gave it a shot and made two. They are 12" and came together quickly, so a quick win. Not sure that I would ever make a spool quilt but it was a good reason to try out the block. I suspect that there will be a few more sample blocks made before our shipment is packed up in the fall 😉....M

Spring Geese

Well, it's April 21 and you would expect to see lots of signs of spring and some nice warm weather to help us say goodbye to winter, but that seems to be a big ask from Mother Nature right now. Spring is, for the most part, still quite chilly and we actually saw flurries this morning, so we aren't out of the woods yet. Despite that, I've been working on decidedly spring-themed Flying Geese.

They will border my Snowballs & Nine Patch quilt, an idea that I got from Then Came June. Actually, the inspiration for this entire quilt has come from her Barret quilt pattern.

Originally, it was just the colour palette and blocks that appealed to me but as my sewing progressed and I started to think about border/no border, I took a second look at what she had done and realized that the picot border was a collection of Flying Geese blocks. Brilliant!

One of my favourite quilts - and the first that I completely pieced by hand - has a picot border and I really love it, the only difference being that it's constructed with HSTs. It always makes me smile. I did the math and realized that if I used the four-at-a-time method to make the geese they'd come together quite quickly. 

Making them scrappy really worked with the rest of the quilt layout.

I'm well on my way and looking forward to starting to sew the rows together....M

The Last of My Quadrangle Blocks

Since January, my hand stitching project has been sewing scrappy Quadrangle blocks for a Quilts for Survivors quilt top. As you can see, Minnie is doing double duty as my side table until I return to quilting her...

The colours are quite cheery and spring-like and have been fun to pull together.

The fact that the word 'LOVE' showed up in gold alongside these orange squares made me smile.

Slow but steady progress means that I now have the last of the required 20 blocks at the finish line - I saved these pretty blues for the last.

There are about half a dozen blocks still to press and then it's time to cut a variety of 9.5" low volume squares to alternate with the pieced blocks. I think when it's time to assemble everything I might use the machine....M

Scrappy Stars for QFS

From January thru June on the last Sunday of each month, the church quilters put up a small display during Coffee Hour to encourage donations to help offset the cost of shipping quilts to residential school survivors - a flimsy or quilt and several blocks. It's a nice let everyone see what we are working on throughout the year and a good way to engage the congregation in this group effort. This coming Sunday is one of those days so I have been busy putting together a collection of 16-inch Scrappy Star blocks.

Quite some time ago, I cut a variety of 4.5" blocks in blues, aquas and yellows trying to have enough variety so that there isn't too much duplication of a print in a block, and then occasionally I sew one or two together.

The stars are the stitch-and-flip variety - easy peasy. I just lay out 15 coloured squares and one white, set two 2.5" blocks on the four coloured squares that will have star points, and off I go.

I think that there's only one yellow block, the rest are blue and aqua. And I think it's getting close to the point of there being enough for a quilt top but I'm undecided yet as to whether I will assemble them all or send them off as they are.

In my book, you just can't beat scrappy....M