I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project using the block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…
And now I don’t want to not achieve this goal I’ve set and so on I go.
This month I’m sharing my eleventh charity quilt and my new pile is now growing, since the first nine have now been donated to the Mansfield Coordinator of Project Linus UK.
My eleventh charity quilt
I looked at this month’s block and thought to myself ‘oh boy, how many small pieces in that basket’ and I seriously considered my sanity and why a hobby might get you cutting up bits of fabric, only to sew them back together. Oh boy for sure.
Once again, and like last month’s quilt my plan was to avoid pinks if I could. I’ve had some red material which I wanted to use for a while and it just hadn’t happened, so this month I tried harder and found myself drawn to matching it with some blues, but mostly oranges - hence the marmalade part in its name. The hearts are on the red material and there’s also smaller red hearts on a white background used in some of the ‘baskets’ so the quilt once again named itself.
The fabrics I’ve used in this quilt are from a mix of fat quarters I’ve had for a while (the red hearts, the cats, and the purple and blue flowered pieces), a shirt of MOH’s (the multi-colour striped fabric), some old curtains (the patchwork orange material) and two pieces of fabric I’m sure I used when I was quilting back in the 90s (the large flowered piece and the blue striped smaller piece). So it definitely fits in with using my stash, and sustainable sewing.
I’d made the four central blocks relatively early in the month, and almost without issue. Actually that’s not true, for the first time I had to completely restart a block which I’ll share more about in my next ‘craft room additions’ post as I think it will fit better there.
Laying out the borders
Learning from my ‘half the scraps’ quilt where I learnt it’s hard to do random, and that my eyes prefer balance I decided to lay out the borders and plan this more than I usually would as I knew I’d have to add in some toning materials as I was sure I didn’t have enough not to do this.
And it came together pretty easily - I was keen to have the baskets of the central blocks radiating out from the centre of the quilt, so laying it out like this helped me get that right too.
With the final, and lighter border added to each central block I realised it needed more to retain the balance my eye craves.
And so with a quick dig through my stash I found a batik in a colour way that was pleasing to my eye.
It looks so much better doesn’t it? And the eye is tricked into thinking there’s the same number of borders around the blocks, but when you look more closely, you’l see there isn’t.
I added a final border using the old curtains which I loved but have no use for now, and set about quilting this latest quilt top, reverting to my preferred straight line quilting and getting much braver with this opting not to use the tape markers again.
With the scrappy binding added, it was done - and its name of Marmalade Love feels right, and works on many levels for me.
Even on the back!
So that’s the eleventh quilt done, and I’ve already made the central blocks for the next one - but more on that next month, though pop back tomorrow to see how I got on with making my own block for my Mystery Block of the Month Quilt.
You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.