Friday, August 9, 2013

The Colors of Sun Valley Raffle Quilt

Time for a raffle! I'm sure many quilt guilds across the country make quilts to raffle. Ours is no different, except this year, instead of making a quilt to raffle for our community's Northern Rockies Folk Festival, we made one to help generate funds for our philanthropy projects. Our guild is only two years old so we are truly operating on a shoe-string budget.

Here it is, called The Colors of Sun Valley
Colors of Sun Valley

This is a king-sized bed quilt made with batiks, and hand-appliqued focal blocks.  The swoon blocks are quite large, although I forgot to measure them.  The photo below was taken just after I finished quilting it, to give you an idea of the size. It is about 118" x 118", giving plenty of room to drape over the sides and to cover your pillows!


Of course now it is all bound and quite lovely, if I do say so myself! All the while I was quilting it, I just knew I had to buy a bunch of raffle tickets myself. This is a gem!

Colors of Sun Valley was a joint effort of the Five Bee Quilters Guild (in Idaho, automobile license plates have designations according to which county you reside. We live in Blaine County, which is the fifth county in the state starting with the letter "B", so we are 5B.)



I don't know how many woman-hours it took to come up with the design, enlarge the swoon blocks, cut out all the fabrics, distribute the fabric, make the applique squares, piece the blocks, piece them all together, quilt it, and finally bind it.  As you all know, it's too many hours to count!

Recreation is king in Sun Valley, from skiing in the winter on Bald Mountain to fly fishing the Big Wood River in the summer.
 Local quilter Karen Hand made each of the applique blocks. Outstanding work!



Close-up of free-hand quilting

Winter scene


Our quilt guild supports local charitable organizations such as Camp Rainbow Gold, a summer camp for children with cancer and their families, The Advocates, Higher Ground, St. Luke's Auxiliary and the Northern Rockies Music Festival, among others.  As an example of our projects, for the past two years, we have made more than 200 pillowcases a year for the campers at Camp Rainbow Gold so each child can go home with a souvenir of their time at camp. Making those pillowcases has been a rewarding effort for all involved!

We are a 501 3(c) organization, so donations are tax deductible. Tickets are $5 each, or 5 for $20. If you'd like to get in on the drawing, just let me know and I'll make arrangements to get you tickets. Actually, I don't know why I'm telling you this because I want to win it!!!

Can't forget the wildlife  





Happy Quilting,
Barb

9 comments:

  1. Lovely quilt! I bet it is quilted beautifully. Hope you are the lucky winner.

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  2. What a gorgeous quilt! I hope you raise a lot of money for your charities. Maybe you'll win!

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  3. Absolutely gorgeous! It speaks IDAHO! I love it. You should win it....

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  4. What a beautiful quilt, who ever wins it will be lucky to have it.

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  5. How beautiful! Wish I had a king size bed for it. :)

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  6. It really does represent Idaho perfectly!!! I love black bear and winter scenes blocks. I've yet to quilt a top this big!

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    1. So how much did it finally end up making?? (IT's just gorgeous...curious minds want to know where it ended up) SMILES!

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  7. Wonderful raffle quilt and you guys support great causes! I really love the swoon blocks done in batik, seeing your guilds beautiful blocks really moves doing some up the "to do" list for me.

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  8. I really like the combination of scenic blocks and swoon blocks. I hope you made a lot on the raffle and that whoever won it loves it. A good guild project.

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