Three NICU quilts now complete

I am up early this morning.  I am excited!  Today is the first day of the quilt store shop hop in and around our area.  There are eleven stores participating.  All the way to St Catharine's, St Mary's (Perth South), Mount Bridgewater and coming backwards to Hamilton, Stratford, Tillsonburg, to Woodstock, Shakespeare, New Hamburg, and ending in Georgetown.  Obviously not all in the one day...lol.  

This shop hop is happening in the month of July, so my mom and I are planning on hitting them all, over the coarse of the month, every Saturday.  Good thing we have 5 Saturdays in this month.  We are both giddy with anticipation.  We haven't done any backroad country driving in a few years.  This will be fun!

I've got my list ready of stuff to look out for, as I visit each place.  Similar to when the kids and I did the road trip about 5-6 years ago (at least), I would like to find a focal fabric for an appliqué quilt I am planning and pull colours from it to purchase fat quarters along the way.  Did I tell you yet that I am sooooo excited!!  Lol...like a child at Christmas time.

In recent finishes, here are a few NICU quilts.  These are quilts that go on the incubators at the hospitals, for the babies, to help with reducing the harsh overhead lights.  This first one is rows of scrappy flying geese.  I've had these sitting around for a while.  So when I unpacked them, I decided they had to be gone.  So into a NICU quilt they went.  This will add some cheer to the incubator.

This next NICU quilt was part of a challenge.  Some of use were given some donated fabric, with the challenge to be creative and use it up.  This is one of the three that I made with the various fabrics, so far.  The others will follow at a later date.  My mom did this cat and sunflower embroidery and I bordered it with a cat fabric.  This fabric is now all used up.  All but a 2" piece.

This last NICU quilt for today is one of 6 hexagon stars that I unpacked.  My daughter, Sabryna, one day decided to make a hexagon quilt.  The pattern was a bunch of stars, like the one below, plus triangle units.  The quilt was stunning, however my daughter did not like her colour choices, so abandoned the stars.  She gave me permission to do as I please with them, so I am making 6 NICU quilts with them.  This is the first one.  I appliquéd the star to a plain white background fabric, added a small yellow border and made a scrappy string border to finish it off.  I think it turned out cute! 

My plan with the other 5 hexagon stars is to continue making NICU quilts, but I challenged myself to not repeat the same borders.  I am going to have to be creative...but I am up for it and actually looking forward to the challenge.  I have a few already figured out, just have to get to them.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I will.  Take care and have fun!