Blankets

A while back, I saw a link to the Disney Give a Day, Get a Day program. If you haven't heard of it, Disney has set up something where you can get a free ticket to Disney if you volunteer for a day with various organizations. We've been talking for a while about going to Disney sometime this year, so I figured that it was a good opportunity for us to get a free ticket while doing something good. Win-win. And then I discovered that one of the volunteer groups in our area was a branch of Project Linus, which gives blankets to children who are ill or otherwise in need. Even better!

So, I signed up the eligible members of the family. (M is too young.) I got gray fleece for Iestyn to fringe - it's very plain, but I thought it would be good for a teenage boy. I had some super soft white fleece that A did the fringe on. (I didn't tell her about the Disney thing at all, just that we were making blankets for kids who needed them. And after she did the fringe, she said "I like making things for people who need them. It feels good." Such a sweet girl!) Then I added some appliqued hearts, since I thought the white was a little boring. I like the way it turned out, and it was a really easy way to make a plain blanket a little more fun:


And last (but definitely not least!), I made a quilt. I really love it:


Certainly there are plenty of flaws, but it's fun and colorful, and that's exactly what I was hoping for. I made disappearing nine patch blocks in the rainbow colors plus pink and brown, then I put borders on them and made the rainbow center block with all those colors as well. The backing is a black fabric with rainbow colored music notes, and the binding is a purple dot. I didn't actually do the binding the "proper" way (I machine stitched it), but honestly, the sewing by hand just wasn't going to happen.

Tomorrow I'm going to ship these off to Project Linus, and theoretically we'll end up with Disney tickets. But even if we don't (or never use them), as A said, it feels good to make things for people who need them.