RONALD McDONALD HOUSE CRAYOLA CHARITY CHALLENGE

As I am such a internet geek, soon after I started making quilts I joined an online community on a message board on Hgtv.com. There I have "met" some wonderful ladies (and even a few men) who have years of quilting experience and I have learnt so much from reading their posts and they are so helpful with my beginner questions. A big part of the community is using their wonderful sewing gift for charity and I decided to join one of the charity challenges.

The Roland McDonald House Crayola Charity Challenge works as follows:

• Each participant gets three crayons from the crayola crayon box
  
• The crayons get mailed out and you have to buy fabric is those colors and only those  but you can use all shades of the colors both lights and darks.
• Any embellishment is allowed and can be outside the colors of the crayons. 
• The quilts have to be no smaller than 54 X 70 which is lap size and any pattern can be used. 
• All quilts have to be completed by December 15th
• From January 2009 - July 2009, tickets will be on sale for $2.00 each or 3 for $5.00. 100% of the proceeds of this raffle will benefit the Roland McDonald House.
• There are 40 quilts entered in the challenge and I got a sneak peak of a few of them and they are all wonderful

So I got my crayons in the mail at the end of August  and when I saw my colors I had to just laugh out loud as they were totally outside my color range for  fabric choice. It was going to be totally  a challenge for me!

 The crayola name for my crayons are Chestnut, Melon and Blush which when I look at them  they screamed BROWN, BRIGHT PINK and ORANGE. Here they are:

I took my crayons to my local quilting store, Eddies Quilting Bee and I was eventually found fabric that fitted into the right criteria for the challenge. I am not sure if they ever saw someone there sitting on the floor coloring on paper who was over 4 years of age!! I eventually got  the following fabric:

The first set of 10 blocks I made had a large space and as I just got my new embroidery machine I decided to use up the space with butterflies, here are a few up close:



And here is the finished top:

About two days after I finished the top, another fundraiser opportunity appeared on the board. One of the ladies lives in the Houston area offered to donate her time and her long arm quilting machine in return for a donation to the Mayor of Houston Fund for Hurricane Ike victims. I took the opportunity straight away as a long arm sewing machine does such a professional looking job much more so then I could do with my machine. 

So my quilt top and the backing fabric was mailed to Houston, Texas and I just cannot wait to get it back to see how it turns out. I bet Carol will do a wonderful job, she confirmed on the message board that it arrived and called my quilt top a " real beauty". This made me feel very proud as this was the fourth quilt top I have finished and the other 39 ladies in the challenge have been quilting for years. 

Once it is returned to me I will have to put the binding on and then mail it back to Texas to the person who is organizing the raffle. Here are some more pictures I took before I  mailed it off to be machine quilted.