Making Good on a Promise

The very first doll quilt I made was  this pink and green one last fall for Operation Christmas Child. After experiencing the  joy of finishing and sending it, I was hooked.

For 2014 I set a goal to make 7 doll quilts for OCC.  In January, I replied to a Craigslist ad and ended up buying all this fabric  from a widower named Lee whose wife had been an avid quilter until she got sick (I'm assuming from cancer).    Barbara passed away in November of 2012, leaving an entire basement studio full of fabric, machines, notions and finished quilts hanging on the walls. (He was not selling the quilts, thankfully.)

While we were chatting, I told Lee that I would be using the fabric to make charity quilts, mostly for children. He said his wife would have liked that.  I choked back tears as I knew he was grieving the loss of not only his wife, but all the quilting supplies that had once brought her such joy.

So, since January, I have been making good on that promise. I have made seven doll quilts for Operation Christmas Child, one for Dolls for Very Sick Kids, and a chemo quilt for my friend Renee' who was diagnosed this past summer with breast cancer.  Each quilt features at least one fabric from Barbara's collection. I've also made a few little home dec and gifties from that stash.

I will be featuring the quilts on my blog, along with
a template of sorts for each one, beginning with the first one of the year .

•  Quilt 1:

 
•  What did I name the quilt?   Purple Pinwheels
•  Why? Because sometimes I just like to state the obvious. 
•  Who will receive this quilt?  Some little girl in a foreign country. 
•  What inspired the fabric choices?   I love purple and my favorite block is the pinwheel. 
•  Which fabrics were Barbara's?  Almost all of them .
•  What is the name of pattern?  I don't think it has a name. It's just rows of pinwheels. 
•  What did I learn from making it?  That this is an easy block to make and that on one of the blocks, I should've used higher contrast. The lavender gingham next to a white sort of gets lost, but I can live with it. Children aren't quilt police.  I also learned that this was a king size doll bed quilt! The rest I made ranged from "twin" to "queen"--sizes that fit much better into a shoebox if you want to include the doll and other stuff!
•  When did I start the quilt and when did I finish it? January and March, 2014, respectively. 

I made a coordinating pillow for each little quilt.

                                      Used purple backing as well. My son, who has a good eye for color,
                                               chose the teal fabric for the binding.

So there is the first of seven doll quilts that have already gone out in shoeboxes for OCC.  Stay tuned for six more.