Secret Sewing Gifted

 I've been working on two different lots of secret sewing recently, and I'm pleased to say that one lot has now been gifted.  You may remember that I like to donate to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.  The co-ordinator, Fleur, is bringing up three grandchildren herself, one girl and two boys, and when I asked, she told me that the children didn't have their own quilts.  Oh dear, I thought, so I mentioned to her some months ago that I would like to make them one each.  Finally, I finished the last one, this was delayed with my South Island trip, and then my Bernina needed servicing, so the completion took longer than anticipated.  But last week I met Fleur for morning tea, and handed the quilts over.

All packed up and ready to go

The first one was made from some Rainbow Scrap Challenge butterfly blocks, stitched last year.  In fact, I remember making several different types of blocks featuring butterflies  over the year, and all the fabrics came from the stash of my former neighbour Dorothy.  She had a real love of butterfly fabrics, and I still have plenty left to work with.  I assembled this top back in August 2025, using purple, black, pink and cream blocks and  decided to use it for the girl in this special family.  Having this top already made and pinned up was a real bonus, I was ready to start quilting.  There is enough left of these blocks to make a similar quilt........sometime.

If they dare to flutter, I'll pounce on them!

Plenty of butterflies for a special girl

But what to make for the two boys?  Then I remembered I had purchased some boys fabric about a year ago, I just had to remember where it was.  Spiderman and bike racers - that should do fine.

What to make with these?

The dirt racing bikes should be suitable for the older boy, I thought.  I picked out the colours of the fabric and framed each block with co-ordinating solids.  And I had some leftover striped binding fabric in my basket which finished it off nicely.

Tricks on bikes

And I really hoped that Spiderman was still a favourite of the younger boy.  There was only a smaller piece of this fabric so I had to think how best to use it.  Luckily the red and black came from my stash, and I purchased extra Spiderman fabric for two of the borders.

Here comes Spiderman

I'm really pleased with how these three quilts turned out, and was more than happy to make the children a quilt each.  Fleur does a wonderful job helping these families, passing on the various quilts I had donated, so I wanted her own family to have their own.

I also gave Fleur my recently stitched drawstring bags for the foster kids.  She told me that she takes them along to the families, and the children can pick their own.  These have been another RSC project this year, I've been stitching bags with the colour of the month so far, so having the colour prompt certainly gets me motivated.   I'm trying to empty "another bag of stuff" with these bag bits in - you know what that is like, I'm sure.

Draw string  bags for the kids, for pencils, treasures, toiletries, or whatever