100 Quilts for Kids Finish!

Hi Friends!

I'm pretty stoked that I'm three days into October, and I've already slashed two items off my October quilty to-do list. Granted, they were almost almost almost done at the end of September, and all it took was a little marathon hand-sewing to get things completed, but I'm still pleased as punch. I learned a very important thing from this marathon session--my needles are all nickle-plated. I'm allergic to nickel, or rather, nickel is allergic to me, and I stripped the nickel from a couple of needles. Yikes! They look ugly, but they still work, so whatever, right?

But before I blather further about unimportant things, I finished my quilt for 100 Quilts for Kids, and none too soon! I'm donating it to Project Linus because those dudes just sound fabulous.

I knew I wanted to make a quilt for 100 Quilts, but as usual, I couldn't figure out what kind of design. Then, I heard about an I-spy charm swap, and I thought, what a fun idea! It's certainly not the most original quilt out there, and sewing patchwork for the first time confirmed my suspicions that it was a little boring to sew, but I'm happy that this quilt will be snuggly and fun to play with.

I quilted it with straight lines on the diagonal and bordered it with some sort of red Kona solid. The assembly was super fast, and I think the longest part of the quilting process was laying out the squares and figuring out what I wanted and where. I swapped for two charm packs so that I'd have enough to make my boys one as well. My oldest especially is just starting to get the fun snuggly aspects of a quilt, and I think he's sad that this one isn't for him. My baby wanted to chew on the corners, but I'm not sure if that means he likes it or not.

The binding is super scrappy. I gathered all of my binding scraps and used them to seal the deal. I figure with a top as crazy wild as this one, weird binding isn't going to be a deal breaker. The backing is a pale yellow flannel, and it was a delight to hand-sew underneath it. So soft. So snuggly! I may be a flannel convert, as now I want to back every quilt for my home with the stuff. (Seriously. I have every intention of backing my Marie quilt in flannel.)

Since my last few days have been all about hand-stitching, I'm hoping to change direction and get to some piecing today. Woo! Have a lovely Wednesday, all!