Harriet's Horrible Hair Day

Sewing Comfort Quilts I like the name Comfort Quilts and the thought of a child or adult finding comfort in my stitches.  Primarily, I use 100% cotton fabric, which is soft. Also, if a polyester batting is used, the cotton fabric will not "pill" on top of the quilt. (In case you did not know, polyester fabric draws bits of the polyester batting to the surface of the quilt creating small white balls that look like "pills".) If I know a quilt will be tied rather than quilted, I choose a simple pattern with fewer seams. That way the "ties" don't have to travel through too many layers of fabric. I've experienced sore fingers trying to wrestle a sewing needle threaded with crochet cotton through multiple seam layers. When machine quilting a project, I use 100% cotton batting, which lies flatter than polyester batting and is easier to machine quilt. The 100% cotton batting also slightly clings to the fabrics, which creates less shifting of material. I bind my quilts a variety of ways. When limited for time, I machine sew the binding onto the quilt. My preferred method is to attach the binding to the front of the quilt with machine stitching. Then I flip the binding to the back of the quilt and hand-stitch or machine zig-zag the binding in place.

Charity Quilt Links List of Charities http://www.quilt.com/MiscQuilting/ CharityQuilting.html Handmade for Charity http://home.att.net/~susanBinKC/ hcharity.html Quilt Pattern Suggestions Here are some easy quilt block patterns that sew into quick quilts. Basket Weave Log Cabin Nine Patch Ohio Star Rail Fence Roman Stripe Square in a Square

I've received requests to show some photographs of the quilts I have made for charity. Members of the quilt guild I belong to make Comfort Quilts during each year, which are donated to various pre-determined charities. Some of the quilts below are quilt tops that are later completed at our annual Comfort Quilt get-together. Many times I complete the quilts so that all they need are guild labels sewn to them.
Log Cabin I like the strong contrasts of the red and blue fabrics in this quilt. Each block has a yellow rectangle center instead of the traditional square shape.
Sampler Quilt The blocks in this quilt were made by members of my guild, and I volunteered to sew them into a quilt. I free-hand machine quilted it. This is one of my first projects using this technique. So easy!
	Pickup Sticks I designed this quilt pattern. The green material has a gold metallic starburst print on it. The red fabric is a red-on-red print, and the white material is flecked with small green dots.
Basket Weave Variation You can't see it well in this photo, but the prints are cheery garden florals with bright pink fabric as the center rectangles and a garden-green border. The pink rectangles are cut a bit larger than the rectangles on either side.
	Nine Patch Variation This project originally started as a double-size bed quilt using the quilt-as-you-go method. However, I chose a too-thick batting that became increasingly difficult to use. I reduced the size of the quilt to lap-size, and it became a comfort quilt. This quilt is both hand and machine quilted.

Copyright 2000 Dawn Lesley Stewart