First of all, I LOVED being able to construct the mystery quilt with you! After 5 weeks, the mystery has been revealed (the finished quilt is pictured below) and the name of the quilt is “I Love Project Linus”. After all that you’ve accomplished on the mystery quilt (or HOPE to eventually accomplish), I hope you agree! In the process, I hope you’ve challenged yourself. If you’ve never matched the corners of a nine-patch, if you’ve never attempted appliqué or even if you’ve never made a quilt before – I hope this has inspired you to at least try. Before I continue with my litany of Project Linus Loves, let's finish up the Mystery Quilt. As you know, this is the final week of construction. You will be assembling the blocks and adding your border.
STEP 1
As you sew the blocks together, make sure that you match up the point of the corner of your snowball block (1/4" from the edge) with the blue-white or green-white corner of your 9-patch block (1/4" from the edge). I find that placing a pin straight through these points secures the corners and matches the points. (Click on picture to make it larger.)
STEP #2
I know that a first look at this step appears to takes you back to High School Algebra Class but if you read it slowly and carefully - you'll see that these equations actually CAN be applied and used in the real world. (No offense to my Algebra teacher Sister Delores.)
Here we go: Assemble blocks by fours and sixes (Row 1 Block 1 plus Row 1 Block 2) + (Row 2 Block 1 plus Row 2 Block 2); followed by (Row 1 Block 3 plus Row 1 Block 4 plus Row 1 Block 5) + (Row 2 Block 3 plus Row 2 Block 4 plus Row 2 Block 5).
OR - a picture can be worth a thousand words... (Click on picture to make it larger.)
STEP #3 and STEP #4
Connect the two sections that you made in Step #2 together and continue on to Rows 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and end with Row 7. Add the side borders first and then the top and bottom borders – and your quilt top is done! (Click on picture to make it larger.)
STEP #4
In order to finish your quilt, you will need five – 2 ½” strips of fabric to make the binding and 1 ½ yards of backing and batting. If you're not familiar with "mitering corners" when you bind your quilt, please check out the following set of instructions. It walks you right through a simple six step process, and you will end up with clean, crisp mitered corners.
Click here: http://quilting.about.com/od/bindingaquilt/ss/mitered_binding.htm
STEP #5
When you’re finished with your quilt, please e-mail me a picture (mary@projectlinus.org) and I will post all of the finished Mystery Quilt photos in our Chapter Pictures flickr site and we’ll let the world know (or at least our part of the world) that there are many people who are happy to advertise “We Love Project Linus!” I decided to challenge myself by using some new quilting patterns, rather than my usual overall-meandering. I found myself "frogging" (rip-it; rip-it; rip-it) SEVERAL times, but eventually I finished the quilt and I think it came out o.k.
Here it is:
The Litany of Project Linus Loves continues...
Here’s another reason I LOVE Project Linus! I hope you all received the chapter newsletter with information on the new fabric line “Komfort Kids” made especially for Project Linus. Fabric designer Patrick Lose and Avlyn Fabrics worked with Project Linus to create these absolutely beautiful fabrics! The fabrics are not available in the retail stores yet –first we need to let our local fabric stores know that if THEY purchase it for their shops, WE will buy it!
Here’s a link to view the fabric line: http://avlyn.com/collections/komfort-kids_latest/ You can look at the fabrics on the Avlyn website (www.avlyn.com) but only fabric shops can order from this site.
Carol and I attended Quilt Market in Houston last October and met Patrick Lose. As soon as he saw us, he said that he and his co-workers are avid supporters of Project Linus on a local level and would love to do more for us. We had already been meeting with Avlyn fabrics about a Project Linus fabric line. Patrick created the absolutely adorable designs and Avlyn fabrics is putting these designs on fabric. We hope that you will all encourage your favorite fabric shops to order the Project Linus “Komfort Kids” fabric line and that you will purchase it when it arrives! The fabrics will be available for purchase by August 2009 – maybe sooner! Patrick Lose and Avlyn fabrics LOVE Project Linus!
In addition - a challenge quilt contest with GREAT prizes will be announced by Fons and Porter in an upcoming issue of their magazine as well! Why? Because Fons and Porter LOVES Project Linus too!
I also LOVE all of our Project Linus volunteers. We have 301 people on our Project Linus e-mail list and 176 on our snail mail list. I hope that each person on our list also LOVES Project Linus and wants to remain on our list. Unfortunately – when I have recently tried to e-mail our newsletter or blog updates to our e-mail list, I have been labeled as a spammer by many of your servers. I have had to separate e-mails by servers (AOL, Comcast, etc.), send multiple e-mails (with 50 or less in each mailing) or simply send e-mails “one at a time”. In the process I know I have missed some of you and some of you are unable to receive my messages altogether plus it takes a lot of extra time to do this. I decided to try a “google groups” message service.
Everyone on our Project Linus e-mail list has been sent an invitation to receive e-mails from me through a google list address. If you would like to continue to receive e-mail messages from me and our chapter, you will need to reply to the invitation and then you will be added to the list. So far, I sent 301 invitations and only have 68 replies. I hope that doesn’t mean that 233 of those on my e-mail address list are no longer interested in Project Linus. If you have not replied to the invitation, please do so right away. You will be automatically added to the list.
There are many advantages to being a part of the Google List. I already have downloaded a copy of the most recent chapter newsletter. That way, if you are unable to receive attachments to your home or work e-mail addresses, you can go to this site and view the newsletter. I will also download all the steps for the mystery quilt and post them as well. Some of you receive the e-mail newsletter as well as a newsletter by mail. If you would consider giving up the snail mail newsletter and simply get the e-mail newsletter, please let me know via e-mail. Technology is wonderful as it continues to evolve but in order to take advantage of the current technology we need to keep up. If you have not received an invitation to the google list or if you deleted your invitation, please let me know and I’ll be happy to send you another one! Thanks!
In summary – I LOVE the Mystery Quilt, I LOVED your e-mails of support when we lost our kitty, I LOVE the new Project Linus fabric line, I LOVE the new google groups list which will make my life much easier, I LOVE each of you – our Project Linus volunteers and I truly do LOVE PROJECT LINUS!
Have a wonderful week and Happy Blanketmaking!
Mary
