Create for a Cause Blog Hop Week 3

 

Colors of Camp

Designed and made by Connie Kauffman

50" x  60"

Today is the day for me to post my project for the Create for a Cause Blog Hop with the Island Batik Ambassadors.  For my creation I used the Painted Blossoms Fabric Collection from Island Batik designed by Kathy Engle for Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs.

Aren't these lovely fabrics?  I was able to use the whole collection in the quilt.

It is always a challenge to design something with so many fabrics.  In many ways it's like designing a scrap quilt.  For this quilt I first saw a photo of a quilt on Pinterest that was a scrappy quilt- but all in red and white fabrics.  Very pretty!  But that pattern used selections of light and dark reds- half the block in dark red and half in light red.  I wouldn't be able to do that with this collection.

So I took the design and made each of the blocks one color and the center blocks all one color and the pinwheels one color.  That was nice and scrappy and I could use all the fabrics.  

Then I thought, why don't I cut the center block on the diagonal and use two colors for the center?  I could use more colors this way.  Wow, I love what that did!  Now I had a nice secondary design of squares on the diagonal.  It is always fun to take a block and play around with it and see what you come up with.  It may surprise and delight you!

The second part of our challenge was to decide on a non-profit that we would like to give our quilt to.  I chose Camp Alexander Mack in Milford Indiana.  

This is our church camp that has a wonderful facility and provides many  programs for children thru adults during the year.  Unfortunately with COVID, almost all programing was shut down this year.  Every year there is a festival and auction in October to support the Camp and I usually donate a quilt or two.  This past year they weren't able to have the Festival, but did have an online auction.  I am donating this quilt and hope we can have the Festival in person this Oct.

On the back of the quilt I spelled out CAMP MACK in bold letters.

Here's a funny story that wasn't so funny at the time.  I prewashed the fabrics for this quilt as I know it will be washed often in it's life.  I washed the fabrics, dried and ironed them and got busy cutting and sewing the blocks.  What a surprise I had the next time I went to do laundry and found one of the fabrics flattened against the wall of the washer!  All  my blocks were already sewn!  Well, I hadn't done the lettering on the back yet, so I decided to add the pretty teal fabric to both sides of the words. I think it looks great and can now say I did use all the fabrics in the quilt!

I used Island Batik Painted Blossoms Collection, Hobbs Premium Cotton Batting and Schmetz Microtex Chrome Professional Grade Needles and Aurifil Thread in making the quilt.

Disclaimer:  all the fabrics, thread, batting and needles for this project were supplied to me thru the Island Batik Ambassador program

Island Batik is having another great drawing. This time there are two drawings- for 2 1/2" strip packs of either Painted Blossoms or Starry Night. Be sure and go to their website and enter.

I am having a drawing of a selection of 44 half square triangles (4 1/5" F) and 4 light colored blocks 9" x 10" of the Painted Blossom Collection.  Leave a comment below to be entered in the drawing.  Drawing is for USA only due to shipping.  Winner will be drawn thru Random.org at the end of the Blog Hop.  Please make sure that I can contact you if you are a winner.