Flying Home - A Charity Quilt Project

I was challenged by Benartex Fabrics to create a charity quilt using the beautiful Chalk Texture fabrics.  I recently joined the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild and the they focus their community giving on the Durham County Foster Program which assists children from birth to 21. They really need quilts for the older kids so I had to create a quilt that was between 50-60 inches wide and 70-90 inches long. It also needed to appeal to an older child, most likely a teen and be gender neutral. Challenge accepted.

The first thing I needed to do was come up with a design. I wanted to find a traditional block that would be easy to put together and would look interesting in different shades of the same color. I wanted to create a quilt that had a rainbow effect across the quilt to use as many of the colors as possible. I did a little research into blocks that symbolize home or have home in the title. There are a lot of amazing block choices, but I was especially intrigued by this blog post from Big Wes: The Meaning Behind Popular Blocks and I loved what he had to say about the Flying Geese block. "Historically, they were believed to signal safe paths or changes ahead." I thought that this was a beautiful sentiment to weave into a quilt for a child dealing with foster care so the Flying Geese block became the block for my quilt.

I focused on pairing the light and dark fabrics to create the blocks and then sewed them together to give them a shaded effect along with the rainbow. I loved how turning the blocks different directions created unique patterns within the quilt. The blocks were 12", so I ended up with a quilt that is 60" x 72". Just the right size to snuggle with.

I named this quilt Flying Home in the hopes that the child who recieves it finds the comfort and home they are looking for. I will be donating the quilt top at my next meeting and one of the lovely longarmers will quilt it so it can be donated.

Thank you so much to Benartex for the fabrics and for this great challenge. This is not the type of quilt that I usually make or design, but I'm really pleased with how beautifully it turned out. I really enjoyed flexing my creative muscles in a new way and for a good cause.

Also as a bonus, the trimmings from the over 100 flying geese will be donated to my friend who makes catnip pillows for a local cat shelter, so this quilt is actually going to support two charities! 

If you want some tips on making flying geese, you can check out this tutorial where I show the no-waste method. I hated flying geese until I learned how to do them this way.