Fishies and Clowns

A few weeks ago a friend shared about a co-worker whose son was born with a rare condition that has required 30 surgeries in the 1st year of his life (I cannot imagine it!)  This coming weekend there is going to be a big fundraiser at a local water park for this wee one and his family.  Part of the deal will be selling homemade items, so I decided to make a quilt. and ended up making 2.

Another dear friend who is an amazing quilter makes quilts for things like this all the time.  I so envy her the opportunity to use her talents and creativity to help someone, so I was thrilled when this opportunity came along!

Here are the two quilts I whipped up... I pieced and quilted these.. nothing fancy, but I think they turned out cute. The Mad Quilter added the binding. I hate that part and he does it so well!  I am a blessed woman!

For the boy quilt, I pulled out some circus fabric I had and used it as the focal fabric adding scraps of this and that to create the coins.  I decided to do something similar for the girl quilt.  I found some fishie fabric in my stash. Can't say it is overly girlie, but I think the fabrics used in the braids helped emphasis the female-ness and the pink backing and binding definitely sealed the deal.

I have to show you the back of the Circus quilt. Hubs and I went to a fabric sell shortly before I made these. A local lady had a fabric shop... she still sells online, but has not been able to cover overhead for a brick and mortar shop right now. She had a big sell out of her home to get the word out. We bought several pretty fabrics and when we commented about some fabric she had with big polka dots, she decided to cut some and added it to our mix for free. We were shocked to find 2 yards of it when we got home. I like polka dots but these are soo big that cutting the fabric would chop the dots up and I am not a big red person.  But I knew it would be used at some point. And it was!  It is the perfect fabric for the back of this quilt!  Goes with the Circus theme so well. And I love the striped binding Hubs added.

Also, I don't usually show labels here as they have personal info. I include the name of the recipient.. a Bible verse (always).. the date and who made it.  Sometimes the quilt gets a name. Well these just got a verse. I add my labels before I sandwich the quilt, so they are sewed on to the back and then quilted through. They cannot be removed without destrouying the quilt.  Here are photos of the labels on these quilt just to give you an idea of what my quilt labels normally look like.

I am working on a new project.. slowly but surely.  My quilting time seems to have diminished greatly... hopefully it will pick back up again soon!

"Belle"