Sew Hungry: A season of giving

I am wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. This year at my house, the Holidays are going to be low key and hopefully stress free! My hubs and I traditionally go to see his family in El Salvador on alternating winters and this was supposed to be a year to go. But we have had a busy busy semester with him interviewing all over the country for residency positions. Next semester will be just as busy with his away rotation to Korea and my heavy teaching load. I am thankful we will get to spend a quiet day at home just enjoying each other's company and playing board games (once I leave the lab...yeast wait for no beast!)

I've been meaning to share two special quilts I made this year for charity. I try to make sure I make 1-2 charity quilts every year as one of the ways I give back. I wasn't sure where to send these quilts originally and I sat on them for a while. But then I remembered that Chick-fil-A sets up a Christmas tree sponsored by the salvation army in December for kids donations. You can pick any number of kids and bring in a gift for them. I chose a 1 yr. old boy and 1yr. old girl to give these quilts:

Boy quilt - I used up the rest of my scoot transportation fabric to make this cute rectangle quilt. I love the backing fabric I chose here too. It's a perfect complement to the front.

For the quilting I decided to try something different and I free motion quilted different angular shapes with a variegated Aurifil thread.

Here is the girl quilt:

This is my own pattern that I am calling fractal. It is actually made up of 16 identical blocks rotated to form this pattern. I quilted it with a giant spiral starting in the center which is why it looks a little puffy in the center in the picture below... or maybe that is because it was folded up for months before I decided to photograph it and I didn't iron it.