CASA Quilt Progress Report

2015 CASA quilt back

The CASA quilt for 2015 is coming along! The Kentucky Log Cabin Quilt is getting close to the finish line.  The back side is done now and the quilt is sandwiched with batting.  Here is how this works:

I love to put something different on the back side of quilts to make it more interesting.  Not always but most often when the quilt is for a good cause.  Last year I created a house like the front only made it 3 or 4 times bigger then started adding borders.  Last year's back side was a happening because I could not find just the right fabric for the back and there was not enough of the perfect fabric for the entire thing.

2014 CASA quilt back

This year I got some fabulous batik backing at the IHQS show here in Bloomington in March thinking that would be good enough.  But all that gorgeous batik was just too plain.  So why not enlarge the house on this quilt and add some log cabin blocks to create the whirling star for the center of the back on the CASA quilt for 2015?  Here it is!  The center block for the back is 60" square.  The quilt itself will finish at about 96" square so this takes up most of the center of the back.  Voila!  The back is another quilt!  I just love it when the math works. And... I got to use some of that fabulous batik!

Like last year, the theme for Monroe County CASA is embroidered in the window on the back - "Safe Homes, Safe Kids."

The front and back of the quilt are completed.  The next step is to sandwich these with some batting and quilt it.  My friend, Bev Lingvai, has a huge Gamill quilting machine.  Yesterday, she and I put the "sandwich" together and basted it on her Gamill. This beauty is now 104" square!  That is a lot of fabric, my friends!  I calculate that there is about 20 yards of fabric in this project.

Meet my George!  George is an APQS long arm quilting machine made to be used sitting down.  Most long arms sewing machines move on a track and the fabric stays in place.  With George, I move the fabric under the needle.  Someone described it as a pencil and paper - the sewing machine needle is the pencil and the paper gets moved under it to "draw" the quilting lines.  Needless to say, it takes a lot of practice and patience!   I am estimating that the quilting will take about 40 hours.  That should give me lots of practice!  And patience.  Maybe.

Every quilt has to have a binding around the edges and should have a label.  The binding for the 2015 CASA Kentucky Log Cabin Quilt will be a piped binding with just a little accent color from the backside to tie it all together.  The label is embroidered and ready, too.

George and I have a lot of work to do to get this beauty ready for ticket sales the end of May.  I truly hope everyone enjoys the Kentucky Log Cabin Quilt.  It has been a joy to create.

More to come.......

CASA Quilt for 2015

Monroe County CASA 2015 Quilt

Kentucky Log Cabin Quilt

Last year I made a quilt for a raffle fund raiser for Monroe County CASA.  The quilt was magnificent and raised almost $5,000 for the charity.  When they asked me again if I could come up with a quilt for the raffle, I thought to myself the Neighborhood Quilt was going to be really difficult to follow.  But there are so many beautiful quilt patterns by some very talented designers.  Another of my most favorite designers is Judy Martin.  Judy is a master at making log cabin blocks into amazing and fabulous patterns.  The Kentucky Log Cabin Quilt from her Log Cabin Quilt Book published in 2007 caught my interest.  It has cute little cabins and lots of log cabin blocks (my favorites).  This had lots of potential for the "Safe Homes, Safe Kids" theme of the raffle. 

Now I have a very extensive store of fabric to make a scrappy quilt.  And I love, love, love scrappy quilts that use many different fabrics focusing mostly on values, light and dark.  When I make a quilt from this wide variety of fabrics, it makes me think about my world.  A scrappy quilt is like people.  So many differences but we can still all come together to make something beautiful.  

Fabric stash choices.

Piles of 1.25-inch strips.

This is just a small sample of the options I had to make this quilt.  It needed lots of color.  The next step was to cut the fabric into 1.25-inch strips.  Again, my AccuQuilt die cutter was indispensable.  I cut and cut and cut.  Then the strips have to be cut into the right lengths for each round of the log cabin blocks.  These blocks are 9-inches finished so there are 21 pieces in each of the 72 log cabin blocks.  I like to cut all the pieces for my quilts before I start sewing.  There are over 2,600 pieces in this 96-inch square quilt.  That is a lot of pieces!!

There are nine house blocks in this quilt.

The log cabin blocks come next then 4 borders to form the frame.  Each border strip finishes at just 3/4 of an inch so precision was a necessity for this to all fit together correctly.  The final outside border is made up of 732 2-inch squares.  Again, precision was to key for this to all work together.  Judy Martin patterns are so amazing!

Close up of cabin block
with borders.

Here is a close up of the cabin with all the borders.  This is going to be really spectacular when it is quilted!  

Now my task is to design something interesting for the backing.  I have some ideas.  

As I am looking at the picture at the top of this post, I notice that one of the log cabin blocks is turned 90 degrees too far clockwise.  Do you see it?  Should I leave it that way or fix it??  Probably have to fix it.  Oh well.  No one is perfect, eh?

More to come.....  Happy quilting!

Quilt for CASA - 2014

This is a story about building a quilt with a theme. It is a year late in documenting but I just felt I needed to do this so that I could remember all the fun I had with this project.

One of my good friends, Jocelyn Bowie, asked if I would be interested in making a quilt to be used in a raffle by CASA (Monroe County Court Appointed Special Advocates).  The group had for years held a raffle for a wonderful playhouse that was built by the firemen in town.  The board of CASA decided to try something new.  The goal for fund raising was $5,000 and I said I would give it a try.

Picking out the right fabrics.

One-inch wide strips cut and ready to sew.

So the next step was to choose a design that would reflect a home theme, like the playhouse.  Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts is one of my very favorite designers and I found the Farmhouse Quilt in her Friendship, Strips & Scraps book.

Then I got to pull all the scrappy fabrics I could find in my fabric resource center (also know as a "stash") that would work for the Neighborhood.  The farmhouse are made with 1-inch strips with doors and windows appliqued in place.  The AccuQuilt die cutter comes in very handy to cut a gazillion 1-inch strips.  The quilt designed by Edyta was not quite big enough so plans were drafted to add another row (street) of houses and a cobblestone border of log cabin blocks to make it work on a queen bed.

Houses for the Neighborhood.

Around each of the houses were garden blocks.  I wanted this to be a very special quilt, so decided to hand applique the gardens.  There were cherry, apple and pear trees with some little birds perched on the branches.  I like to do my applique using freezer paper for the shapes and starch to fold the edges over the shapes until the pieces are ready to be sewn down.  Below is a picture of the tools I use, including the very important cup of coffee!

Tools of the trade for preparing
 pieces for hand applique.

Once all the pieces are prepared, it is time to "plant" the gardens.  The family took a trip to Hilton Head over Spring Break last year and I took all the hand applique blocks with me.  It was a fun project to work on.

All the parts and pieces for the gardens
 in the Neighborhood.

Once the applique was done, it was time to put the houses and gardens together.  Best part of this garden is the center block that has the little bird who just ate the cherry from the branch above him.  Such incredible imagination Edyta has!

I absolutely love log cabin blocks in quilts.  Any time I can add log cabins to a quilt, it happens!  Since this quilt needed to be bigger than the original design, I decided to add three rows of color coded blocks.  They looked like cobblestones to me so I imagined that I was building a little road of cobblestones around my Neighborhood.

Cobblestones

Pieces of cobblestone log
cabin blocks

The theme for the CASA fund raising is "Safe Homes, Safe Kids."  As I was building my Neighborhood, I imagined this as a safe and wonderful place for families and children.  Quilts represent comfort and warmth and security to me.  It just seemed so appropriate for the CASA cause.

Back of the Neighborhood

The back of this quilt took on its own life.  I did not like the backing I bought for the quilt so decided to see if I could get creative with the back.  There were a lot of red triangles left from the first border and I had lots of fabric left to cut up.  The back became a quilt by itself by the time it was finished.  A giant farmhouse is centered on the back with a border of red triangles and floral fabric that just seemed right.  In the windows of the giant house, I embroidered the words, "Safe Homes" and "Safe Kids".  

When all was finished, we had the quilt appraised.  Caryl Schuetz did the appraisal and it came it at a whopping $3,400 replacement value!!  Wow!!  Tickets went on sale late May and the drawing for the quilt was held November 1, 2014.  I got to pull the winning ticket and, wonder of wonder, who should win this quilt made with so much love but my very own Sista Karen Buckley in Sacramento, CA!!!  I could not have been more thrilled!  And..... CASA raised almost $5,000 selling raffle tickets for it!!  It does not get much better!

Here it is on my bed just before I mailed it off to her.  The end of April I will be visiting Karen in Orangevale and hopefully will get to sleep under this beautiful quilt.  

Here we are in 2015 and I am making another quilt for the CASA fund raiser.  More about that later.....