Charity Quilts
 

Curious as to how many charity quilts you donate each year... and, how many of those are "birthed" instead of a formal binding.

I birth almost all of mine. I did 26 donation quilts last year and all were birthed except 3 cause my sil quilted them for me so I used regular binding. :)

I longarm and bind for a local group. I only quilted 10 throws this year, but hope to do more next year. None of the quilts from this charity are birthed, they do over 300.

I might add that when I birth I also topstitch close to the edge for added strength as many of these quilts get washed in commercial machine that are hard on quilts.

I make at least 21 a month for Linus. Lately more and more of them are fleece edged with crocheting. The fabric ones I always birth and then machine quilt about very four inches with a decorative stitch and thread. I finish them by sewing around the outside edge about 1/4 to a 1/3 inch in with the same stitch and thread. Our chapter produces at least 600 quilts a month.

Wow, I am impressed with the generosity of all of you. I made five charity quilts this year and felt like I was doing pretty good. :) I put binding on each of mine.

Dina

this is the way i do it as well. and when stitched closely, it sometimes looks like a binding

I don't make any distinction how I make charity quilts from the quilts I keep. They are all machine quilted with binding. The exception is the quilts given for pet rescue of course. I'm not a fan of birthing anything bigger then a placemat. I donated 8 twin size quilts I made to a foster group this year. I furnished fabric and batting for 12 quilts for my guild's donation quilt group. I made two king size quilts and two crib quilts for my family this last year.

I do log my charity quilt and blanket donations on a calendar, but never add them up. That is because some of them I only have a hand in instead of making them from start to finish. And many of them are fleece with crochet edging.

I donated 2 of my best quilts to the Bible Camp quilt auction and another one to campus ministry. Those had traditional bindings. For Project Linus I usually use a fold over of the backing to the front and stitch down binding. The only quilts that I "birth" are those made by our quilt guild for a children's charity.

One older lady volunteers to hand stitch bindings for charity, so when Linus gets unfinished quilts, I do the machine sewing of the binding in preparation for her work.

There seems to be no set formula for me -- each charity quilt has its own situation.

It depends on the quilt really. If it is a printed child's quilt, the birthing method is a down and dirty fast way to finish them off. I pin and do some machine quilting in the center and a stitch around the edge to stabilized the quilt for lots of washings.

If it is a pieced top with lots of details it deserves a hand finished binding in my opinion. I did buy a binding tool for the bernina and hope to take the time to learn it this coming year. I get intimidated with new things... LOL!

I make many donated quilts and purses and sometimes finish other people's donations to the diabetic children's silent auction. I also have helped the animal shelter. I want to make bibs and wheelchair pockets for a local county live in senior center. I bought the patterns, so maybe this year?