The Shop

Part 1 (first ten quilts), Part 2 (11-20), Part 3 (21-30), Part 4 (31-40)

Blanket 41! December 3, 2024

I’ve made this pattern a few times, Fat Quarter Shuffle by Cluck Cluck Sew. I had a bunch of plaids and stripes that I found difficult to coordinate with other fabrics, so I figured I’d just do a plaid quilt! Of course when cutting out my first blocks, I accidentally cut the block an inch narrower than the pattern called for. Soooo I added the grey stripe to get the quilt back to the right width and cut all the other blocks one inch narrower. I actually love my happy accident and how the stripe looks. I love everything about this quilt and was so tempted to keep it for myself. Another one with backing from fabric given to me by Project Linus. I quilted it in varying width horizontal and vertical lines, my thinking is that it mimicked a plaid pattern.

Finished size: 48″ x 56″

Blanket #42! December 4, 2024

Completed a day after #41, this took me more than a day in total, but I had worked on several quilt tops at once, then got them all ready for basting, only to run out of spray baste. So I kept working on tops while I waited for the baste to arrive. Then I got them all basted, and began quilting and binding. So quilting and binding this quilt took me an evening, making it finished just a day after the last one.

This is another Cluck Cluck Sew pattern (I obviously love her patterns), this one is Fat Quarter Friday, in the second variation. Recently I finally got around to organizing my fabric. It had been somewhat organized by color, with some fat quarters in a separate pile. It’s now organized first by size of cut: fat quarters, 1/2+ yard cuts (meaning it’s at least a half yard, but not a full yard), 1+ yard cuts, 2+ yard cuts. Then by color. In doing so, I found many of these floral fat quarters. Not really my color/vibe, but I thought they’d make a great quilt. I added in some “neutrals”. Well, I love it. The fabrics came together very well, including the backing fabric and binding fabric that I found in my stash and were much easier to find when I could just look in the right size, then find the right color. My basement really is my very own quilt shop.

Finished size: 48″ x 60″

Blanket #43! December 4, 2024

I saw “Just Get It Done” Quilts recommended on Reddit, and saw several “stashbuster” patterns. My favorite thing! Also, the theme of the channel is right up my alley, with lots of simple/quick tips and patterns. This one is “stashbuster #7”. Again, super easy to find a backing to use now that my fabric is organized.

Finished size: 37″ x 48″

Blanket #44 – December 25, 2024

I promise it’s actually straight, it was a windy day and crochet doesn’t hold it’s shape when held up. This one has been a work in progress for a while. First because I hate the yarn. I had ordered it online after loving other colors in the same yarn. It actually doesn’t look awful in this picture, aka from a distance. Close up, it reminds me of this cup:

Then I tried a few different stitches and I think it took me three tries to end up with this one, which gives it the two ribbed rows repeated. I put it aside as I was busy quilting a bunch of blankets, and quilting goes much faster. However, my kids were home from college and I was spending more time in the living room and less time secluded away in my basement (aka sewing area), so I pulled this out and completed it on Christmas Day.

Finished size: 80″ x 54″

Blanket #45 – January 2, 2025

This is Fat Quarter Friday again, the pattern used in blanket #42, however it’s a different variation. While cleaning out my basement, I found an old quilt template (used to mark the quilting pattern) and I played around with it. It looked kind of cool, like topography lines. I also didn’t have enough backing for the entire quilt, so I added this black and rainbow strip to the back and really love how it turned out.

Finished size: 60″ x 45″

Blanket #46 – January 4, 2025

This was my first “Jelly Roll Race”. You can buy fabric pre-cut into long strips and in coordinating patterns. Then you sew them end to end. You halve the long strip and sew the halves together, repeat, and boom, a quilt. I saw a variation that added squares between each strip, I liked the look of that, so that’s what I did. I’m honestly not a fan of jelly rolls. The fabric never seems consistently cut and tends to be more hassle than it’s worth. A grey day outside and overly “warm” lighting inside, I’d say the colors are somewhere between the first and fourth photo. The blues were more teal, and the purples were purple, not fushia.

I decided to have a little fun with the quilting make these loops across each row. I also pieced together the backing with about 65% of it being the blue/grey wavy stripes and the rest being the mottled grey. Really like how it all turned out.

Finished size: 60″ x 52″

Blanket #47 – January 5, 2025

This is another one where the colors aren’t quite right in the photos. The pink squares are more of a dusty rose or mauve color. Closest to the middle photo. The pattern is a free one from Jordan Fabrics, called Boardwalk. I adjusted it down however to throw-sized. If I do this one again, I’ll recalculate the sizes to make better use of the fabric, this one had a lot of leftover pieces.

Finished size: 65″ x 46″

Blanket #48 – January 8, 2025

This one is a free pattern from Jordan Fabrics called “Balancing Act”. When I first saw it, I wanted to make it like stacks of books, but finding a good background and fabrics that looked like books was not going to happen out of my stash. This one was relatively easy to make, sort of like a simple “beginner” bargello quilt. I cut down the size from the pattern to 60″ x 60″. Did a meander quilt to break up the straight lines, also since the block placement meant there wouldn’t be a very good guide for vertical lines and it already had a very horizontal line that I didn’t want to emphasize with quilting.

Blanket #49 – January 9, 2025

This pattern is from Just Get It Done Quilts and is called “The Ugly Quilt”. You use those fabrics that you just don’t love. Having made so many quilts lately, and mostly only from my stash, I know exactly which fabrics I keep passing over. Which ones just don’t seem to work with anything else. Even though I may like them, I just couldn’t get them to coordinate with anything else. Then it’s kind of like a stack and whack, except you whack them all the same. It goes together very quickly. And while it is “ugly”, I still like it. Meander quilted.

Finished size: 60″ x 48″

Blanket #50!! – January 13, 2025

For my last quilt (!) I went back to an old standby, the Yellow Brick Road pattern. Pulled several pink, green, and blue florals from my stash. I also bought some new quilting stencils and tried them out. I don’t LOVE the way they work, but if I want to be fancier than straight lines or meander, they are an option.

Finished size: 64″ x 46″

And with that, I’m done! Having started before my 50th birthday in the fall/maybe late summer of 2023, I had challenged myself to be done by my birthday that November. My expectation was that I’d create 50 BABY blankets, only to discover that my local Project Linus really needed “teen sized” blankets, often twice the size of a baby blanket. My challenge has taken quite a bit more time than expected. But I’ve done it! 50 blankets for Project Linus. 25 have already been donated and the second 25 are in bags on my sofa, ready to go.

While working on these blankets, I’ve joined groups of other “blanketeers” and see various thank you notes and stories of children (0 to 18) and their parents who appreciated these “homemade hugs”. I’ve heard from a couple of my friends that their kids were recipients of Project Linus blankets. I had one mom who found me via social media thank me for the blanket her son received.

I’ve tried to keep track of expenses, and I think I spent just over $1,000 on supplies. Mostly backing fabric and batting, but also thread and basting spray. I tried to use my stash as much as possible, which I have whittled down very nicely. Quote from my boyfriend, “Now you have room to buy more fabric”.

The breakdown of the 50 blankets:

35 were quilts, 11 were crochet, and 4 were fleece.

27 were throw/teen sized, 15 were crib sized, and 8 were baby sized

I have no idea how many hours I spent. I’ve read that the “average” simple quilt takes around 25 hours, so a guess would be 875 hours on just the quilts. The crochet blankets took longer, and the fleece blankets took a lot less. So a very rough guess is over 1300 hours. If this was my job and we use a 40-hour work week, that means 33 weeks, or 8 months. Given that it’s not my job and I did this in my spare time, I guess I don’t feel so bad that it took me a year and a half.

I will continue to make and donate quilts to Project Linus, just not a set amount or timeline. 🙂 Hey, I may even be able to make my family some quilts. Or donate to other organizations.