52 Charity Quilts in 52 Weeks - December

I am SOOOO excited to share my progress with you this month!!!

I met exceeded my goal!!! I made 54 charity quilts in 2018!!!

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I set a goal at the beginning of the year to make 52 quilts for charity in 2018. You can read more about my plan on this post. On the last day of each month, I recap my progress and host a linky party where you an link up any charity you've done too!

If you remember from last month, I had:

1 finished cat quilt for Emma's Plan
3 finished teenager quilts for foster kids
11 finished Debbie Mumm charity quilts (3 here, 5 here, and 3 here)

That's a total of 15 quilts for charity, still 37 away from 52.

But I had a plan!!

I started by loading 15 yards of 108" wide backing fabric on my longarm.

Using batting scraps, I started quilting the 10 tops that I made last month. I started with polyester batting scraps, then used my cotton batting scraps. I am happy to say I eliminated a LOT of batting leftovers with this project!

I could get three quilts across.

I worked in groups of six, then cut those off the frame before starting the next set.

Once the pieced tops were quilted, I decided to use the one-yard pieces that I had planned to use as backing (before I got the longarm!) as whole cloth quilts.

This was how I could meet my goal!

 

When the batting scraps ran out, I used my roll of Fairfield batting I got from Jo-Ann. It's almost all gone now!

I free-motioned a large meander over the quilts.

I used 50wt Aurifil #2324 Stone for all the quilting. It blends so well with all the Debbie Mumm fabrics!

I was able to quilt 12 quilts each day for three days (15 quilts on the third day), for a total of 39 quilts!

This handsome fella made sure I got plenty of breaks!

Working against the clock, I had just December 30th and 31st to bind all 39 baby quilts! Thankfully, I had done much of the prep work in earlier months!

I stitched the binding to the front of all the quilts. I used up all my bobbins of various colors of Aurifil to do this!

 

Usually, I press my binding to the back, then stitch in the ditch from the front. This produces a clean finish that I really like.

However, I didn't have time to press. Instead, I decided to stitch on the backside along the binding edge. I made sure to use the same Aurifil 50wt #2324 Stone thread in the bobbin, so the line on the front matched the other quilting.

 

This method allowed me to stitch the binding down in a final victory lap that took just three minutes per quilt!

 

 

It didn't take long for the finished quilts to add up!

39 quilts in 5 days.
39 quilt finishes all on December 31st!

In summary, my total charity quilt count for the year looks like this:

1 finished cat quilt for Emma's Plan

3 finished teenager quilts for foster kids

50 finished Debbie Mumm charity quilts (3 here, 5 here, 3 here, and 39 this month!)

For a total of 54 charity quilts in 2018!!

I hope to get some better pictures of them all and do a recap post to discuss what I've learned from this year-long endeavor. Maybe next week. Until then, what did you sew for charity this month? Link up!

An InLinkz Link-up

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If you liked this post, you may also like these:

52 Charity Quilts in 52 Weeks

52 Charity Quilts in 52 Weeks - November

52 Charity Quilts in 52 Weeks - July