Adventures of Voodoo Duck: Charity Sew In

It's not every day that Voodoo Duck leaves the confines of my sewing space but every once in a while I jam him in a Jack Daniels tin and take him someplace exciting.  Yesterday he was carted off to the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild's Sew-In, the one where we'd assemble the charity quilts that we've been working toward for months.

The guild collected 8.5" HST blocks from members all year. All the squares had a solid grey on one side and the other side had to be one of (I think) 6 colours. I took a bundle of 80 blocks home quite a long time ago and placed it on the proverbial back burner, you know...like you would when there's lots of time to do the job. Somehow the months flew by and left me only days, where does the time go anyway? So, Wednesday while the Robot was working away putting beautiful leaves across Ellies batik flimsy I jumped in and stitched up my bundle of blocks.

Ellies batik quilt being quilted with a design called Trillium.
It's a gorgeous pattern, but it's a very slow one to stitch out.
All the time it took the Robot to complete a row though gave me time
 to sew up the Charity flimsy...so no complaints here! 

There really is nothing quite like a deadline to suddenly kick your butt in gear! I had a real mish mash of blocks...prints & solids and not enough of any one to come up with any really exciting layouts. With the Robot limiting my time for head scratching, it quickly dawned on me that I could do some diagonal stripes of sorts and this is what I came up with...

Then, on Friday between hairdoos I managed to get it quilted up and ready for binding. I quilted it with Apricot Moons design called City Windows, I really love the modern simplicity of this quilting pattern.

Saturday morning with all my gear and a duck in a tin I set off for the Sew In. Lot's of hands were on site to put the quilts together and it was a lot of fun to part of the energy in the room. I got a scrappy binding put on my quilt, pieced a back for another, and helped with some basting. The quilts are being donated to The Lodge That Gives in Halifax. This is a place close to the hospital where people can stay while they are having treatments for cancer when they don't live close enough for a daily commute. It's a very special place. My uncle stayed there when he was battling lung cancer. When we were brainstorming to come up with the recipient of this years quilts one of our guild mates suggested the Lodge as she herself stayed there while she was waging her own battle. I know that the folks who eventually rest under these quilts will feel the good wishes, healing energy and love that has been sewn into each of the 10 quilts that will be placed on the beds there.

I wish I had thought to take pictures of the quilts as we were building and finishing them but I didn't, I was too busy trying to keep Voodoo Duck in line. He was having a good time visiting some of our favourite bloggers...Adrienne, Linda, Lesley, Kathy and Jen...if you're looking for some quilty goodness check these gals out! Then pop on over to the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild's Blog to see lots of pictures of the charity quilts...I think four or five were complete by days end!