Just One Slab - A Follow-Up

Hello, hello!

This post has been a long time in coming.  Last summer southern Alberta suffered a horrible flood that caused great damage and thousands of people lost their homes; absolutely tragic.  Among the many who jumped to their aid was Cheryl Arkison of Dining Room Empire, who organised and led not only local Albertan quilters but international quilters into creating relief quilts for flood victims and I'm so proud to count myself among the many contributors.  I wanted to take a little time to reflect back on this amazing project and share with you Cheryl's update posts throughout the project.

I first stumbled across Cheryl's "Just One Slab" project last July, which you can see in this post.  The project immediately grabbed my interest (and heart) and I was hooked.  Within a day or two, I had already whipped up 7 slabs and was so excited.  Incidentally, I totally fell in love with the green and orange slab blocks so I kept them for my own slab quilt and then sewed two replacement blocks for the charity.  Within the week they were winging their way from Sweden to Alberta...

Throughout the last year, Cheryl has periodically updated her own blog on the progress of the Just One Slab project.  In her Round 1 Update you can see the amazingly beautiful rainbow coloured piles of slab blocks and some of the first few quilt tops created from the donations.  I just love this photo; it gives me warm fuzzy feelings:

Then in her Round 2 Update you can see a large number of completed quilt tops.  In fact, I even spied one of my contributed blocks - so exciting!  Check it out:

Bottom row, second block from the left - that's mine!

How cool is that?!  Out of the 9 blocks I made and sent, I actually found one used in a quilt!  Pretty impressive when you consider that the project received over 2000 blocks!  More cool stats about the project can be found in this post (along with some more photos, of course).

Eventually delivery day came...  This is such a heart-warming post you just need to read it for yourself.  So lovely, too, to see all of the delivery volunteers and the children getting involved.  There is also something just simply beautiful to me about this photo; I can't describe what it is but I just love it:

And finally, Cheryl herself looks back on the wrapping up of the project one year on from its conception.  Yes, even after an entire year, the last few slabs are still going into quilt tops and will find homes with those who need them.

Thank you, Cheryl, for the opportunity to reach out, help those in need and join in your truly inspiring initiative.  I feel truly grateful to have been a part of making a difference and paying it forward.

Belated WIP Wednesday

Okay, I know it's officially not Wednesday anymore but I was having a completely slovenly day yesterday and didn't do much of anything (it was wonderful, btw).  Anyway, I'm playing catch-up today and have actually managed to be quite productive so I guess it all evens out in the long run.

So, first up - I have finished my donation slab blocks for the Quilts Recover Southern Alberta project - yeah!  I sat down today and sewed a new orange block, since I had fallen in love with the first one I made and then made a second red block, since I had a lot of leftover red scraps I'm unlikely to use for anything else.

That brings the total up to eight blocks altogether and I'm quite happy about it.  I'm eagerly awaiting Cheryl's address so that I can pop these into the post in the next week.  Here's a look at the collection altogether:

I've also been working a bit more on re-organising my scrapbooking stash.  It all started when I found some wooden clothes pegs at a good price; brought them home and decorated them with narrow washi tape, then sat down and went through my ziplock bag of ribbons, creating a donation pile and winding the rest I wanted to keep onto my new, prettied-up pegs.

How lovely, eh?  I've since found an old glass container I no longer use for baking supplies and have stored them in there.  Well, then I seemed to have gotten the de-stashing bug because I quickly moved on to my stash baskets, which are now pretty bare.  I'm very happy about that, though, because a lot of it was stuff left over from my extremely early scrapping days that doesn't match my current style or things that I've received from elsewhere (ie. magazine gifts, etc.) that again don't match my style.  And of course, clearing out the old means plenty of room for new shopping - squee!

So at the moment this is the current state of things.  Not really organised, as you can see.  Those two woven baskets in the bottom shelf are actually my 'stash' and with the exception of cardstock and patterned paper, everything fits in here.  Small, right?  What can I say, I own a small flat and I need to balance living space with hobbies.  The majority of my scrapbooking supplies are currently in a similarly large basket in the kitchen, though - that's my current stash that I'm working through so this certainly isn't all of it.

The box on the second shelf in the first cubby on the left is my box of de-stashed items.  The other two cubbies on this shelf have things that would normally fit into the stash baskets but it's all awaiting further organisation at the moment.  I'm trying to decide what to do about paper storage right now.  I have paper sleeves that my 12x12 cardstock comes in that I'm considering recycling to hold my patterned paper in one of these cubby squares.  Or I might invest in a cropper hopper - one for cardstock and one for patterned paper would be plenty for me.  Or perhaps the black three-partitioned cropper hopper.  I'm going to chat it over with a fellow scrapper friend who's coming to visit for a crop this weekend and then try to decide on a course of action.  Suggestions are whole-heartedly accepted.

Just One Slab - Albertan Relief Quilts

Last night I was browsing through Quilter Blogs and stumbled across a great charity project:

Naptime Quilter Blog

Here's the run-down: As you may be aware, southern Alberta suffered a horrible flood recently and while the immediate danger is gone, many people are still suffering and in need.  Cheryl Arkison is organising quilt block donations - just the blocks - which will then be sandwiched and quilted by local quilters and donated to recovering southern Albertans.  Sounds absolutely awesome and brilliant!

I've long thought about making a scrappy quilt.  I'm one of those people that hates to throw away even small scraps, be it fabric or pretty paper, so the idea of using up those little bits really appeals to me.  However, the OCD part of me often struggles with the complete randomness and lack of cohesion scrappy quilts typically embody.  But the colourway slab idea that Cheryl is using is awesome - scrappy but organised enough to make me happy inside.  I also love that there's no pattern involved, no measuring - just sew randomly as you please; it's like a fun jigsaw puzzle figuring out how to put all those scraps together in the best possible way, such a fun challenge.

So first thing this morning I dug through all of my fabric and picked out scraps and pieces of fabric I knew I wasn't going to use or was happy to donate.  Here's my piles:

It doesn't look like much here but there's plenty even for 15.5" blocks!  Next I sorted everything into colourways and got started sewing.  Oskar made sure to lend a hand with the tedious job of pressing the fabric.  He's extremely helpful that way.

So far today I've sewn four blocks and I have plans to continue with more.  I'll take photos to share tomorrow when there's better daylight so stay tuned for more.  I've been enjoying sewing these blocks so much I'm even thinking of making one for myself after I've done a set for the charity; they're just so fun and easy to whip up and they look really striking - a modern twist on the scrappy.

If you're a fellow quilter, I encourage you to please visit Naptime Quilter and help Cheryl with this thoughtful project - a little goes a long way!