Quilt Raffle Winner!!

Today was the big day of the quilt raffle draw! I was set up at the Farmer's Market by 9am, sold another 60 or so tickets before 1pm which brought me to a grand total of $1565 raised, awesome!

My display at the Farmer's Market - I managed to get the same wonderful spot again, right by the entrance!

Good thing I started folding the 900+ tickets early, it took about 2 hrs and a young woman from the cheese booth next to me helped out :) (she also took all the photos that have me in it)

A lot of tickets...

The manager of the market, Roger, agreed to draw the winner at 1pm. Here he is shaking the tickets up.

No peeking while he drew the winner

Here it comes... Roger drawing the winner of the raffle quilt

And the winner is... someone named Angela, who according to my records bought her tickets at the market 3 weeks ago. I can't believe someone I don't know won the quilt, after so many of my tickets were bought by people I know! I can't believe that our former summer student, bought 100$ worth of tickets, didn't win the the quilt!

A shot for the memory book!

Calling the winner with the good news... I got an answering machine!

So hopefully, I can track Angela down soon and get the quilt to her! I feel bad for all the nice people (known and unknown to me) who bought tickets but I'm very happy to send 3x more money than I had hoped to Doctors Without Borders on Monday!

I've updated the Raffle Quilt blog if you want to see the final progress of my fundraising!

I'm not sure what to do with my life now... I have no more tickets to sell, I feel lost. Oh well, as soon as I get home the cardboard boxes will remind me of what to do with my life :)

Disaster Relief Quilt

So, as mentioned in my last post, my plans for the Disaster Quilt have changed, from crumpling it into the garbage bin during the piecing process to loving it so much after the quilting was finished that I've decided to raffle it off with all benefits going to Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers/MSF.ca). So the Disaster Quilt is now a Disaster Relief Quilt!

I've always admired MSF's work, sending doctors and other medical staff to conflict zones around the world to bring medical aid to people in need. I love that this organization is independent and helps anyone in need. I donated to them last fall for the Pakistan Flood Appeal, so now I'm getting their newsletters, of course. One of the stories I read really pointed out how limited some places are regarding the available medical equipment.

In brief, a doctor from Ottawa, Canada, went to an African country with MSF, while her husband started a residency in pediatrics on Baffin Island, in Canada's north. She wrote about an emergency case of her husband's, a little kid that was helicoptered to Ottawa and put on a respirator to survive. Around the same time, the MSF doctor had a very chick child in her care, but couldn't even determine what the problem was since no x-ray or ultrasound machine was available, so they had to treat one of several possible afflictions, hoping that it was the right one. The child died not long after. So here we are, complaining about wait times at the doctor's office, while in some countries, there might not be a doctor, or you have to walk twice as long as we spend waiting here, just to get to the doctor's, plus some wait time on top of that.

Well, suffice it to say, while I can't work for MSF as a doctor (since I am not a Dr) and can't give all my money away to charity (not the type), I *can* and love to quilt and I'll gladly spend the time selling raffle tickets.

So two weeks ago, as this plan was taking shape, I started power quilting the quilt to get it done. Then last week, I contacted MSF with a proposal, set up a blog (msfquilt.blogspot.com) to promote the raffle and went all around town setting up sale dates. I'm also now the proud owner of a lottery license :) My goal is to raise 500$, which means I have to sell 250-300 tickets.

I know that none of this applies to any of my readers, since you're all far away and won't be here to buy tickets, plus you all have tons of your own beautiful quilts :)

I guess I just wanted to share, since that's what a blog is for, and also because this raffle is taking up most of my time these days! :)

Pitch for a Benefit Auction

Amy over at Diary of a Quilter posted about a good cause the other day: an auction to help her friend Jenny pay for medical bills of her leukemia treatment.

I read the post and thought, well, that sucks, but I don't know the person, have no connection to her and many people need help in the world, where does it stop? I also do quite a bit of charity work already, foster children in Africa and South America, Global Parent with UNICEF, fundraising for Doctor's Without Borders and occasional donations to WWF - it adds up.

For some reason, I clicked on the link to Jenny's blog and started reading the recent posts. Then I went to the archive and looked at the first posts. I discovered that this blog is not an "illness only" blog - Jenny started it years before she was diagnosed with leukemia. That was the first thing stopping me in my tracks (in addition to her being a young woman like me) - cancer can happen to anyone, anytime. Reading Jenny's regular posts about her plans, travel dreams, sluggish progress with her PhD thesis and having fun with friends made me think that it's not much different from my personal blog for friends and family. What if starting tomorrow, there'll be a 5 month posting break on my blog and the next blog talks about visitation rules at the hospital and how the first round of chemo is going? That is a scary and sobering thought. One thing that really struck me was Jenny's attitude: she's always smiling, no matter how tired and sick she looks - I know, I know, blogs are edited to keep the negative stuff out, but something shines through, a tough spirit that is fighting to the last. Gosh, I don't even know this person... I guess I'm trusting my gut feeling.


I browsed/read through almost all of Jenny's blog and by the end of it felt compelled to contribute. So I'm donating my pink zigzag baby quilt to the auction which will be held on Feb 14-15 (very soon!). People can still donate items until Feb 12th (Saturday!) and it can be anything as long as you're willing to ship it to the winner (you can restrict the destinations).

There are very interesting prizes up on the auction blog (no pun intended, though it's a neat one - auction block/blog) already, including photo sessions, quilts, food, jewelry, knitted hats and a cool 4 person trip to a hot destination...

If this cause interests you/moves you, hop on over to the auction blog, donate an item or bid or not, whatever you feel like! Hopefully, should I ever be in such a situation, I will have friends to help me out, as well...

2010 Quilt Retreat II

Okay, here's what I made at quilt retreat!

While sorting fabrics, I started picking out prints that I had bought or received individually and that didn't seem to go with anything else. I did some searching and found that I actually could mix and match quite a few prints together, and they all had something burgundy/wine red in common.

For some reason I keep thinking Warm and Fuzzy when I look at these blocks, so that'll be that name for now...

So I'm in the process of making log-cabin style blocks with a large central focus fabric and 3 layers of logs around it - none of the blocks are at that stage yet. I have a similar stack of fabrics in green and will make the same blocks in green to see if they go together, alternating the blocks or something like that. If not, I'll think of something else. This is a No-Plan-Quilt :)

Next, I was busy busy busy sewing drunkard's path blocks. I asked for some tips re: getting both ends of the curves lined up, and Crispy sent me some tips too.


However, I must have done something wrong when cutting out the pattern, or else, something is off. I pin at the start, middle and end, and I always end up perfectly in the middle, no extra fabric on the convex or concave side, but at the end of the curve, I *always* have 1/8 to 1/4" left over. I find that because I can't hold on to anything there, I can't make the ends meet. Oh well. I've resigned and will trim the blocks to size later...
I've got almost all my pieces sewn together. Some of the colours and pairs aren't my favourites, but they'll probably go well with the completed quilt in the end. I don't actually know how many blocks I'll have or what kind of layout I'll choose, yet.

The third and last project I did at retreat was actually the first one of the day. I had purchased these fabrics online quite a while ago after seeing them on someone else's blog. It was time to cut into them. I decided to make a miniature filmstrip, figured out my measurements to make it turn out about 30x40", my usual baby quilt size, cut all the pieces and took them to the retreat.
I didn't bring the pattern though, so when I started this project as my "instant gratification project to start the retreat weekend", I promptly cut a strip that wasn't supposed to be cut - I was lucky and it still fit. I ended up having a whole bunch of headaches with this quilt though, so it didn't end up being quite as quick or satisfying as I'd hoped. Plus, I'm really not happy with the 1" inner sashing - it's too narrow for my taste. Maybe it'll grow on me.

I'm calling this one "Chicks and Elephants"

I had cut out pieces and sashing for a second quilt, identical except using off-white sashing. I decided against that and am turning it into a different layout now.

On the last morning of the retreat, at breakfast, the quilt guild members were discussing charity projects for this year. We will make a quilt or two for the animal shelter (to be raffled off by them, not used as bedding for the cat cages!!!), and we decided to make it scrappy and have at least one animal print in a 12.5" block. We were also asked to bring some example blocks for the other members to the next guild meeting (next week).

Because I was still on a motivation/adrenaline/quilting rush from the weekend, I promptly started on some elaborate blocks when I got home. What the quilt executive didn't realize, I think, is that some people (like me), use their scraps until only tiny pieces are left. So my blocks are quite seam-heavy. We'll see how that goes over :)

Here's what I made, anyway:

The bottom four blocks are done log cabin style, in the broadest sense of the word. I'd almost lean towards calling the style "add-pieces-to-the-edges-wherever-you-can". I sorted my scraps according to colour, though that wasn't a prerequisite.





The last block I wanted to make a bit faster and use some narrower pieces, so I found all kinds of strips that are almost to narrow to be used for my taste (a few 1" ones in there), and I guess it's pretty obvious how I made the block :)


Well, I haven't done much quilting since that Sunday - no I lie, but the quilting I did do I'd rather forget. What a headache I had Tuesday working on the Disaster Quilt, one of my QUIPs in the right side bar - more of that later. Suffice it to say, I should have expected that debacle with a quilt called disaster quilt. It's living up to its name!!

Either way, all the sorted fabrics are still on my floor, I just covered them up to protect from sun (ahahahaha, what sun????) and dust (yup, lots of THAT around!).


People have learned not to come by my place unannounced, as they would have to dig a path through my quilting projects to get to the couch ;)