These baby quilts were sort of made by accident. Or at least, I didn’t plan to make two baby quilts. My mom sent me a ton of precut fabrics in various sizes, and the part of my brain that is afraid of becoming a hoarder living in filth, decided I must use up as much as possible, so that it could not become part of a swaying tower of crap that could fall and crush my dog.
Meanwhile the very wonderful Quiltalong 2022 is doing Blocks of the Month again this year. The block for January is the 9-Patch Star. I decided to cut one out of a fat quarter bundle mom sent. Then I decided I had no use for just one of the block. So maybe I’d use up some more fat quarters, and make a couple. Somehow that turned into me cutting 14 whole 9-patch stars out of 6 FQ’s and 2 colors of jelly roll strips.
14 is a weird number of blocks to turn into a quilt, but I didn’t really want to cut a ton more. Even though I had more fat quarters in those fabrics, I decided to see what I could do with the scraps leftover from the first 14. I found I had enough to make 4 mixed 9-patches, and with just 1 more FQ, I could make frames for them. All in all these two quilts used 6.5 fat quarters, 8 jelly roll strips, and 3 1-yard cuts for the backing and binding, with some 2.5" square scraps of each leftover. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, especially considering they made from random Walmart precuts that my mom picked up at random.
Since the blocks are 10", each quilt is 30" square. After just a few franken-seams, I was even able to use up some scrap batting, and cleared out 5 nearly empty spools of thread in the piecing and quilting. These are both going to Quilts for Kids, a really wonderful charity that provides quilts to seriously ill children in hospitals. Kids cannot bring their favorite stuffed animal friends with them to the hospital, because they usually cannot be washed and dried on high heat to kill germs, so these become a bright, safe friend for kids battling life-threatening illnesses.
If you’re a quilter and want to donate to them, they take 100% cotton quilts in kid-friendly fabrics, or they will even send you a pre-cut quilt kit, along with the pattern, for you to make and send back. They receive lots of bolts of kid fabrics from fabric manufacturers when a line is discontinued, so you never know what you’ll receive in your kit. If you’re not a quilter, and still want to help them, they also take regular monetary donations. 
Well, what do you know, your wonderful craft is one of this week’s Featured Projects! Congratulations! 