H2H Challenge

This post should be titled "The Joys of Moving" My husband got a promotion to another city which is about 1.5 hours away from Austin.  We took the plunge and moved south so that it is about an equal commute time-wise for both of us.  Between packing and moving not much sewing was done.  I got my quilts pin-basted and my Batik Jewels quilted last weekend when I finished uppacking.  I got the binding done today.  I did some straight line quilting and machine bound it to save time.  The machine binding went well.  This time I used Clover clips and some glue. 

My other quilt for Happy Chemo is a work in progress.  I have it half quilted.  This quilt is from some Moda weaves that I got several years ago and decided to use.  I love the yellow and blue combo. I should have this baby done by tomorrow so I can send both quilts off on Monday.  P.S. This is the new-to-me Juki Exceed 600 that is making my life so much easier.  It is so much fun to quilt on this machine with the bigger throat.  I am almost enjoying the quilting process.

H2H - Hands 2 Help Charity Quilt Drive

This will be my second year to participate in the H2H quilt drive organized by Sarah Craig.  There are three worthy causes this year to chose from.  I will be contributing to Happy Chemo again in honor of my daughter Emily.  She has passed her one year mark and is doing great.

You can click on the button below to get more information.  Today is the first sign-up day.   Last year Sarah organized enough sponsors so every contributor got a prize. This year I also volunteered to be a sponsor.  It was so much fun to get a prize last year that I would like to have a share in the fun.

I already have one quilt top done and have ideas for another one.  My Batik Jewels is Quilt #1.

The quilts have to be done by June 1.  There are various linky parties to post your progress.  All details are on Sarah's blog posting.

Swaps and Bees and Charity Quilts

I have been very busy with my swaps, bee and charity quilts.  I am in a Hexie Bee.  I made my first hexie block last month.  I finally got it sent off to England today.  She wanted hexies sewn in the shape of a sewing machine.  My size was 1" hexies.  Those were pretty easy compared to the one flower hexie shape she wanted out of 1/4" hexies.  That was a challenge.  See the picture below.

See how teeny that flower is.  I don't think I have a 1/4" hexie quilt or any other project in my future.  It was fun.  The very first time I have put hexies together.  I have some basted and waiting to be put in a project but had not done the actual whipstitching.  It wasn't hard once I got the hang of it.  Next month's project is a teeny easier.

I finally cut the threads off the back of my charity quilt for Hand 2 Help.  My quilt is going to go to Happy Chemo.  The pattern is from "Scrap Republic" by Emily Cier.  I am sure that I have other quilts from that book in my future since I have so many scraps.  I pieced the back from lots of pink prints.  I quilted along the edges of my log cabin strips.

I also managed to get three more blocks done on my City Sampler.  They are shown here on my very own autographed copy of Tula Pink's book.  

I have acquired quite a few yellow, black and white fabrics to use in my sampler.  I also participated in a rainbow charm square swap.  I mailed two yards of fabric cut into 56 charms. My colors were blue and purple.  I used a blue from Simply Color and Laurie Wisburn's Tufted Tweets for my swap fabric.

Forget to snap a photo of the blue but it was the Ikat pattern.