Down The Home Stretch Foundation

This past weekend was the fall Stichin' Chicks quilt retreat in our barn.  22 women, plus Baxter, Charlie and Reynald were on site most of the weekend!  Reynald is our maintenance man, always available for minor emergencies, like helping to open the high barn windows when the pull cords break.

This retreat we all spent time working on piecing four queen size bed quilts for a charity called "Down the Home Stretch".  It's a foundation that pairs retired race horses with veterans.  It is located on a ranch outside Creston WA.  Here's the link to their website if you are interested.   http://www.downthestretch.org/ 

We managed to finish all four quilt tops, plus a Christmas themed throw for the back of a couch or chair.  Before the retreat started, Beth made two throws out of flannel scraps that both she and I had in our stash, and Brenda, who has just learned to crochet, made a small afghan that was her practice piece, that definitely doesn't look like a practice piece!

All the fabric for our projects was donated by a friend of Beth's.  Audrey is a generous woman, aged to 90 years plus, who has decided that she has had enough sewing.  She donated her stash to our group, to be used for charity quilts, and use it we did!

Before retreat weekend, I spent some time cutting three of the four quilts that we were planning to piece. 

Cutting kits for charity quilts before retreat begins.

Quite a pile of scraps!

Re-organized scrap pieces for the next project.  

This quilt block is called Double Four Patch.  I really love how it turned out.

Double four patch assembly.

More double four patch.  This is a block that had to be carefully laid out as you sewed.  One twist and it throws off the whole block!

Beth and I had a good system.  Of all the blocks that we made, there were only three mistakes, that were easily fixed!

Lynnie pressing double four patch blocks.

Alicia laid out the blocks so that we knew how to put them together in to rows.

The finished top!

This one is called Snowball. Martha and Cheryl were the main construction engineers on this quilt.

This top went together fairly quickly.  

And this is the quilt top that we all contributed to by bringing a piece of plaid fabric from our own collection. It's a Nine Patch with an alternate background block.  Everyone made a block and then  Lynnie and Nina worked on row assembly.

Margaret working on a nine patch block.

My mom making a plaid nine patch block.

Kathy and Betty making sure the nine patch blocks are going together in the correct order.

Emily pressing a nine patch block.

And a finished nine patch block.....

Finished nine patch quilt top.

And finally the charm pack quilt.  Both Beth and I had charm packs that we donated to this quilt top.  We just had to buy a little bit of background fabric and the borders came from Audrey's stash.

The charm pack quilt top.  Very simple but striking.  

I forgot to take a photo of the darling Christmas theme throw that JoAnn made.  Perhaps I will remember to take photos of the finished products?  They always look different once the quilting if finished.