Friday, November 4, 2011

Days of Giving

I recently read a book called "29 Gifts".  It is a true story of a woman who was diagnosed with MS one month after her wedding.  She understandably had  difficulty adjusting to her new life and the struggles she has with MS.  A spiritual mentor recommended she give 29 gifts in 29 days.  It could be something simple such a giving a kleenex to a stranger, giving a homeless person some change, or calling a friend who was having a bad day.  She has since doing that started a worldwide effort to do the same thing.  It is a great concept and an interesting book.  After giving it some thought, I realized we have been doing the same thing, only in a different fashion.  Our "gifts" go to the hospital and although some people after 29 days start the project all over again, we have without fail continued our project for 525 days now.

My sister and I have started a new project for ourselves.  We always try to throw in some personal sewing between sewing the quilts for the hospital and sewing shop models for a quilt store.  I had been looking at some block of the month programs when I had the thought, "Why not do our own?"  I have the book "Civil War Love Letter Quilt."  It is a collection of traditional quilt blocks with each one having am authentic letter from a soldier to his family during the Civil War.  Our original intent was to sew two blocks a month.  Well, after getting started, that idea went out the window!  The blocks are quick and so much fun to make that we are now just sandwiching them in whenever we have time.  The first decision was to choose fabrics.  Susan chose to do hers in batiks.  I chose Fig Tree fabrics.  I thought it might be fun to share these with you as we go along.
This first block we did is called "Enthusiasm"


Here is Susan's version in the batiks.




Here is mine in the Fig Tree fabrics.

Aren't those fun?  I'll post future blocks.  It is going to be a lot of fun to see the blocks and what we come up with.  Each block takes little fabric and it may be a chance for us to use our scraps!  And as an added bonus, you get to see the corners of our dining room tables!!

Here's a quick look at some of our new quilts.



Deb pieced this blue and white Disappearing 9-patch.  Simple, basic, and great for a boy.



Sandy used a colorful cowboy print for the backing when she quilted it.


Janean pieced this beauty from leftovers from another quilt she had made. I think it is so pretty--the simplicity adds to it.


Sandy added the backing that matched and quilted beautiful yellow flowers and vines.  Hopefully, you can enlarge the pictures to see this quilting.


Judith took some cute cat fabric, fussy cut it to single out those cool cats and came up with this fun quilt.


Here's a closer look at those cats.


Karen used Olivia for the backing when she quilted this for us.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at the quilts, the blocks and finding out about our amazing 525 days of giving.