Tidy Up Tuesday - Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project/Hands2Help - My (Quilting) Contribution

Welcome to another edition of Tidy Up Tuesday!!  Today's post has been long in the making.  In September AND October of 2018, the North Carolina coast was slammed by two back to back hurricanes.  Seeing a need, Carole (From My Carolina Home blog) spearheaded a the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.  A quilt collection program to add to the relief efforts.  I decided to answer her call for volunteers to quilt several donated tops.

Here is a review...

Carole matched longarm quilters with quiltmakers who weren't able to quilt the large size requested for displaced hurricane victims.  Near the middle of March, the first box arrived from the Brunswick Quilt Guild.  You can read about that in this Mail Call Monday post.  I was busy with client quilts at the time, so the donation quilts sat.  And sat.  And sat!  (Carole had assured me this was fine.)

In late April 2019, Katie at Salt Marsh Path posted that her Hands2Help quilts were ready to go.  That got me moving on my own H2H quilt contributions!  The quilts that I'm quilting for the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project will be counted for Sarah's Challenge at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  Since the CHQP was among the beneficiaries for this year's quilt drive.  Unfortunately, these three quilts will be late.  They have to be fit into my limited quilting time (and in between my client quilts.)

Photos and stories of each of the Brunswick Quilt Guild quilts...

Throughout the remainder of the post, I have used BQG as an abbreviation for the name of the guild.  When I (finally) got started, I began with one of the "twins."

BQG1...

By the middle of May, I finally had a break in my quilting schedule and took the first quilt out of the box.  Twin One was made from the Guild's Perkiomen Valley Block Drive blocks:

Follow the CHQP FAQ link and scroll to 'Is there a specific pattern that needs to be used?'

Freehand swirl/hooks in a soft green thread cover this quilt:

The back was a donated plain green sheet with the seams removed.  Simple and cost effective:

After several hours at the longarm, the quilting was complete:

When squaring up the quilt at my Evening Quilt Bee, a fellow member volunteered to do the binding.  Off-cuts from the trimming will work perfectly for that.

I attended my Weekly Quilt Group the following week and picked up BQG1 Donation quilt from Margaret (Thank you!!) with binding applied and sewn down:

Here is a close-up of the swirl/hook pattern on this quilt:

Oops!  Can someone PLEASE pick that thread off the quilt before posting this photo?!?!
I guess not.  Just TRY to ignore it.  :P

BQG2...

The beginning of June found me taking the next quilt from the box.  Twin Two looked just like Twin One, but there were no seams removed from the backing provided:

I'm guessing this big, beautiful print must have been a duvet cover:

The quilting took quite a bit longer on this quilt than on the first.  Same sized quilt.  Nearly TWICE as many hours to quilt!  This was a lesson that I won't soon forget. Multiple evenings were spent standing at the longarm.  Eventually, I finished the quilting on the BQG2 Donation quilt for the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project:

I used a free motion loop/double loop pattern and a soft gold thread that worked well on the front AND the back of the quilt:

Now...  I just needed to figure out what to use for the binding, as the front and the back are quite different from one another.

Thanks to my good friend Britt, I have a lovely shade of deep purple fabric for the binding:

 It's PERFECT.  Thanks SEW much!

I made and attached the binding to the back of the quilt at an Evening Bee meeting and delivered it on our Weekly Bee's Field Trip in June:

Thank you, also, to Candy who finished the binding while I got to work on the final quilt.  She returned the quilt at June's Quilt Bee meeting and I shared the completed quilt there and at my Monthly Evening Bee a few days later:

BQG3...

Along about the middle of June, I was starting to worry that I might not finish the final quilt on time.  For me, panic breeds action!  It took some doing to choose thread for this quilt, shown here spread over the rails of my longarm in all its autumnal splendor:

Ultimately, I decided on a denim gold thread, wound bobbins, and loaded the back for BQG3 Donation quilt.  A day or so later, the top was loaded and quilting was begun:

The quilt top (and probably the backing) was made by Laura L. of the Brunswick Quilt Guild.  The Guild provided the batting and the binding came from my stash.  If you zoom in on the photo below, you can see how well it went with the colors of the quilt:

Candy made and applied the binding, as well as finished the quilt (so that I could work on a couple of other projects with looming deadlines.)  Thank you SEW much, Candy!!

FYI... 

When I brought this particular quilt home and opened it up, DS2 exclaimed, "That is GORGEOUS!!"  If you knew him, you would know this is not a normal behavior for this reserved son. Honestly, I had no idea that he even LIKED fall colors!!  (How sad is THAT?!)

The colors are a bit washed out in the photo shown above.  :o((

The point is, Laura, it appears that your quilt has universal appeal.  Nice work!  I'm sorry to say that I somehow managed NOT to get a photo of the pieced backing.  However, I found a shot from my Weekly Quilt Group (Thanks, Deborah!) showing that this could easily function as a double-sided quilt:

With the third quilt done and dusted, it was delivery time...

Please note - even as I post this - that the deadline is still a couple of weeks away.  Yes.  I am VERY proud of that fact!!  :P

Upon my arrival, I took some shots out on the "terrace" at Cary Quilting Company of BQG Donation Quilt 3:

BQG2:

And finally BQG1:

Layered on the patio:

The rocking chairs inside looked inviting...

Quilt One:

Quilt Two:

And...

Quilt 3:

Of course, a quilt stack:

And one last shot as they were taken away to wait for the "ferry" to Wilmington in a couple of weeks, when Julianne will drive them down to Loving Stitches in Fayetteville for the next leg of their journey:

I was pleased that last week's APQS Owners Group at Thread Waggle Quilting worked with the approaching deadline for getting CHQP quilts to my (somewhat) local drop site.  If the quilts were done, (which they ended up being) I would only need to make ONE trip to Raleigh!  Thank you to Julianne of Cary Quilting Company for offering her store as a collection point.

SEW...

You KNOW what that means, don't you???

Shopping!!!  :o))

There was LOTS to see...

Class offerings:

Quilt Carolina information:

Another interesting class:

I came home with a new book...

... And narrowly avoided buying one of these Mini Charm Packs:

LOOK!!!  Many shades of PINK for my RSC Quilters:

I almost came home with a darling batch of Fat 16ths, too:

Beautiful quilts everywhere you looked:

It was a rainbow of color and information at every turn:

The curated bundle of "scraps" dwindled to these six with PINK and an adorable bird print that you can see on the windowsill below...

... And with one of the metal quilt blocks available for purchase:

Hedgehogs!!!  SEW adorable:

Then, reason took over and my little bundle of joy was (reluctantly) returned to its basket of family and friends:

On the way out, I got a laugh from the sign that I missed on the way into the shop:

And, just so you know:  It was 99 degrees on the way to the shop and 105 degrees on my car thermometer on the drive home!!  That sign was like a breathe of fresh air.  :o))

Until next time...
Donating time is SEW important!!!