11.5 Give it Away

March blew in like a lion & I almost forgot this week was the next Project Quilting Challenge. Warmer days & melting snow have given me spring fever, its been hard to concentrate on work when I just want to be outside picking up the yard and planning my garden.

We still have enough snow, blustery days, plenty of ice, mud & water to keep me indoors & working on quilts, but it's always good to know spring is just around the corner.

The challenge this week is "Give it Away", we have been challenged to open our hearts and hands and create something quilted and give it to someone. It doesn't matter who we give it to, or when we give it, we just need to complete the quilt by the deadline, with the intention of giving it to someone else. Sounds simple enough, unless you overthink it. Which if you know me, I tend to overthink.

I was in a panic, how could I make a quilt in a week, quilt it and give it away? Even though I had just finished a baby quilt the week before, made, quilted and bound in 5 days. All ready to be mailed off and gifted away. Somehow my brain wasn't thinking about how easy the challenge was, but instead was trying for whatever reason to make it hard.

I pulled out some kits, I dug through fabric, I looked at quilting patterns and still had nothing. I just knew this was going to be the week I wasn't going to get anything done. But then Kim the creator of Project Quilting had a live video she posted on Facebook about how probably every one of us was overthinking this challenge and basically told us to be calm, we didn't have to make a king sized bedspread, LOL we could make anything, just like all the other challenges, anything as long as it fit within the rules, which are that is has to be quilted and finished in the time frame of the week.

Years ago I purchased a scrap book at a rummage sale, inside the book was a piece of paper someone had hand written the quote from the poem The Vision of Sir Launfal by James Russell Lowell ~ "Not what we have, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, ~ Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." ~

Calming down & remembering what this challenge is really about, giving of ourselves to others, I suddenly had a plan.

I pulled out a scrap bag of flannel fabric I had purchased last year in a "grab bag" sale, called my friend Dawn & made plans to go spend a day with her. We enjoyed an entire day of catching up, and quilting. She worked on her own scrap pile and made nine patch blocks, and I took my scrap bag and sewed it all together with no rhyme or reason and made a little lap quilt.

 I have a large star quilt on my long arm machine which I will be working on all week, so I knew I wasn't going to get the lap quilt quilted before the deadline, but I still needed the day of sewing & a day away to catch up with friends & take a break from overthinking.

After I finished the lap quilt, I took the scraps of the scraps and put together a little mug rug to give away. It is so cute! The fabric in the grab bag was all camping themed flannels, I now wish I had more of, because my life was not complete until I saw those plaid thermos'. LOL

 I knew Dawn's daughter Krissy would love those little raccoons, bears and thermos jugs as much as I did. So when she came out to her folks house after work, she is who I gifted my "Give it Away" project to.

Doesn't that fabric make you want to go camping!

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I have to share pictures of the Christmas cactus my mom gave me this summer. It was my Grandma Smith's Christmas cactus.  I think it is either confused about the seasons or just happy warmer weather is on it's way too, it has been blooming like crazy all month!