Covering the World, One Quilt at a Time

Creating quilts to donate is one of my favorite parts of quilting.  I like knowing that something I made is being used by someone I never met.  I have given quilts to many organizations over the years, including local charities, national charities, and drives for terrible events like natural disasters and survivors of mass shootings.  For the second half of 2023, Accuquilt has partnered with Island Batik and Baby Lock to Cover the World, One Quilt at a Time.

My favorite donation quilts to make are quilts for kids, so I wanted something fun.  I have the dinosaur die from Accuquilt and feel like dinosaurs are always a hit.  My most recent Island Batik Ambassador box included a strip pack of Morris Tiles, a pretty blend of browns, teals, peaches, and wines. I planned a simple block with an appliqued dino surrounded by a strip from the pack.  

 

Because the brachiosaurus is so much longer than the t-rex or the stegosaurus, I put them all in middle so that rectangle could be larger. I pulled out the browns and teals of Morris Tiles for the outside of the blocks and used various green scraps for the dinosaur appliques.  The background is Batter, one of my favorite Island Batik neutrals that sadly has been discontinued.

Fire Monkey & Buddy in the trees

After making the fun dinosaur quilt, I still had a lot of strips left, including all the peach and wine fabrics from the collection, so I decided to make a second quilt.  I bought the llama die the day they released it (my sister-in-law loves llamas) but hadn't used it yet.  

 

First, I had to look up what colors are naturally occurring for llamas.  The answer was all shades of brown, white, gray, and black, and they are occasionally spotted.  I looked for scraps in those colors for the llamas and used leftover bits of the teals from the dinosaur blocks for the llama blankets.  The background is the basic Sky.

These were very simple and fun to make.  I did the dino top in one long afternoon, and the llama top in 3 shorter sewing sessions.  The appliqueing was the only somewhat time-consuming step, and even that didn't take too long.

I will be donating both of these to Levine Children's Hospital here in Charlotte. 

Do you also like making donation quilts?  Island Batik and Accuquilt are offering monthly prizes between now and the end of the year.  You can see all the details of how to enter here.