New charity quilt top

I am so happy to announce that I have finished my first ever quilt top. Yey! It is of course going to be donated to Manos en Accion, as part of the charity project and also going to be  part of the 100 quilts for kids organised by Katie @swinbikequilt.

My aim for these charity blankets is to be super creative and resourceful, and make good use of the materials I have or can get hold of. So I pulled the Noah's Arc fabric I had in my stash (it was originally intended to be used as applique for a baby project - so sorry but it is gone for charity now) and matched it with some polka dots I had. But I needed some more fabric... So thanks to my lovely husband who donated a shirt (that was in GREAT condition except for the collar) I got the perfect combination I was after.


Decided to start with 12 rectangles of the Noah's Arc fabric as the centre of my squares with a white border. And once they were all assembled I laid it out and started to think further.

It seemed like a good idea to keep it simple and just use the polka dots as border and background. This was my test run of how I thought it would look like.

After the white border was on I assembled the rows with the polka dots fabric. And after the four rows were completed started joining them together with a strip of the same fabric.

This is how it looked as I was working... it is handy to be working in the spare bedroom so don't need to move the pieces around every day (as it is the case with my bed and the dining room table!).

And voilà, after some more cutting and sewing this is the finished quilt top!

This quilt top is full of mistakes, but they all made me learn valuable lessons, so instead of going back and amending them, I just fixed them but left the mistakes there, and it makes me love it even more. It is so comforting to know that someone will have this bit of me with them.

Anyway, back to lessons learnt: Starch, starch and more starch! the more I used it the easier I found to cut, piece and sew straight! and don't underestimate the value of a well attached pin!

I am still debating what the backing is going to be... have some fleece in light blue that would go fantastic... do I dare? or shall I use a cotton backing and make the fleece into simple blankets as well for the project? would love to hear your thoughts!

Nati xx