2nd Annual Action Kivu fundraiser

I’m really happy to tell you about this wonderful fundraiser. If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember the Action Kivu fundraiser Alissa held last year. All told, together we raised over $10,000 for Action Kivu. This money helped pay for new sewing machines and supplies, and provided funding for Congolese children to attend school (take a minute to read Alissa’s follow-up post from last year to see the results of the fundraising efforts).

Action Kivu is a nonprofit organization working to help victims of the Congo rebuild their lives. They do this two ways – by providing sewing workshops teaching students to sew, knit and embroider so they can work as seamstresses to provide for their families,

and secondly by working with primary schools to fund the education of children affected by the conflict. You can read more about their efforts here.

Last year’s fundraising efforts were so successful that the goal this year is $15,000! I’m quite certain that together we can help Alissa meet this goal (you can donate here) and in turn provide desperately needed aid to the women and children of the Congo.

As an added incentive, take a look at these gorgeous fabrics – many are no longer available, and there’s also a stack that’s not yet available. Take a minute to donate and you’ll have an opportunity to win some of this lovely fabric. Win, win! Click here to donate!

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4 months

Max is 4 months old today! (Everyone warned us how quickly it would happen, and it’s true — I can’t quite believe four months have already passed!) As of his 4 month check-up, he’s now 28″ tall (99th percentile) and just shy of 16 pounds (60th percentile). I haven’t been very good about keeping a baby book, so I have to include this info here so at least I know I can find it in the future!

Anyway, I’ve been having fun taking Max’s monthly photos on a different quilt each month. I don’t think I’ve shown any yet, so here’s a little mosaic of the first 4 months…


1. 4months, 2. 3months, 3. 2months, 4. 1month

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lotta charm!

As soon as I received my charm pack of Lotta Jansdotter’s upcoming line, Echo, I knew I wanted to see those prints in a quilt. Unfortunately this line isn’t out yet, so I had just one charm pack to use. I decided to make it my personal challenge to take those 15 squares, make a decent sized quilt out of them, yet still have Lotta’s new prints be the star.

Initially I pulled out the aquas, grays, browns and one pink print. Once I started creating some blocks, I realized the orangey-golds would really give it a nice boost (Lotta certainly knew what she was doing with these colors!)

I used the charm squares as the center of each block, and surrounded each with lots of white and some corresponding solids and a few basic prints. I’ve had this type of design in mind for a while, thinking it would be a good one for the small bits of Liberty of London fabrics I’ve been collecting for years. It turned out very much as I pictured it, and I’m really happy with this quilt top. (Perhaps this is the push I need to get started on that Liberty quilt!)

Anyway, now that I’ve had a chance to play with these prints, I absolutely can’t wait for yardage to be available. I’m quite sure I’ll want to make another quilt using a bit more of the fabric!

_ _ _

And now, it must be asked… who was going to keep me on track to finish up all those unfinished quilts? (oh right, that was me!) I had all these grand ambitions to make backings for all those quilt tops, but once again, I was lured away by the thoughts of shiny new quilt tops. Somebody help?

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