Speed Sewing for Charity

One of the unexpected joys of the quilting retreat this past weekend included making a charity quilt. Liberty mentioned the prospect of doing a scrap swap at the retreat and encouraged anyone who wanted to participate to bring a few quart-sized bags full of scraps. Me, being one who has trouble throwing anything away, has more than enough scraps hoarded away to share so I filled up three bags and brought them along.

Carrie making her block.

Over the course of the weekend, however, the scraps made their way out of their ziplocs and into a huge scraptacular pile in a corner of our classroom. Liberty then had the bright idea to turn our swap into a speed sew for charity instead. Anyone who knows me that sewing for charity is a particular passion of mine so I was 100% on board with this idea! We decided to tackle this project after dinner on Saturday night, thinking that it would create a natural break in our momentum and be easy for everyone to start a new project without interrupting any creative flow.

Liberty and a few others took the time to gather similar colored scraps into one pile on a cutting table. This theme turned out to lean toward green - my favorite color. Once we were all back in the room, fully sated from dinner, Liberty started the clock. We all had just 30 minutes to blindly grab a handful of scraps from the pile and create one block, unfinished at 12.5", for the quilt.

My fugly block.

Can I just tell you how much fun this was? All of us laughing, and swapping scraps - racing toward the finish line. And there were some amazing blocks that we created. I think mine was in the running for the ugliest block. But I followed the rules and only used the scraps I grabbed, regardless if they looked good together. I even had a little strip of selvedge in mine that I managed to incorporate into the block.

After a half hour passed we had 20 amazing blocks and a few of the ladies started sashing them in white. I have to admit that it turned out to be one gorgeous quilt in the end! Liberty pieced the top and a couple more blocks came in for the back. She's going to take it home and finish it for us so we can donate. We all had a blast with our speed blocks for charity. Liberty even took the rest of the scraps and started sorting them for our next weekend sew. We're hoping this becomes a regular feature. I can't wait to do this again!