The old-but-new quilt goes out the door

I wrote yesterday about finishing a log cabin quilt that I started probably in the late 1970s.  It wasn't good enough to keep but I hated the thought of throwing it away.  There was a lot of time and effort put into those blocks, and in the cosmic sense, think of the interest on that time and effort accruing for almost 40 years!!  So I felt morally bound to do something with the blocks.

I can be a masochist when it comes to piecing, because I truly love sewing bits of fabric together, but I'm without motivation when it comes to quilting.  I'll do it in order to make a great quilt top into a completed work of art, but not just to make a utility quilt with no specific purpose.

So I bundled the top off and sent it to Bonnie Bucknam, who makes quilts to give to an orphanage in Guatemala.  I've sent her a couple of tops in the past, which she has quilted up on her longarm machine, and it makes me feel good to know that somebody will use the things that I have spent a lot of time on, even though I don't particularly love them any more.

Here's a photo of one of my quilts that Bonnie finished last year with its recipient.

It's nice to think that a little girl in a tropical region of Central America now has a quilt full of tropical flowers.  And it's good for the soul to make something purely functional that you know will keep somebody warm and with any luck, bring a smile to their face now and then.

If you have some quilts in progress that you'd like to get out the door, while giving yourself a nice warm feeling, consider sending them to Bonnie for her Mayan Orphan project.   She'll take just the top, or a completed quilt, or even donations of fabric for the quilt backs.

Here it is a new year already, and many of you probably have "finish up some of that old stuff lying around" on your list of resolutions.  So before the fervor of new beginnings wears off, here's a way to kill several birds with one stone.

Happy New Year!