Dolls need quilts

I read about this project over at Craft Hope to donate dolls to children at the Casa Bernabe Orphanage.

I'm sending these girls off tomorrow to live in Nicaragua. I'm sending their little quilts with them, too. Dolls need quilts.



These girls will be going to Victoria, as a contribution to Handmade Help. Each doll has a little quilt, mostly made from leftover bits and pieces from quilts I've made over the years. Those little pieces went a long way - there are 13 little quilts in that pile. I had some assistance making the dolls from my sewing friends - they've never made dolls before, so it was quite an experience.

The quilting is progressing - I'm quite enjoying it now that I've started. The plan is to enter both quilts in the RNA Quilts Across Queensland show this year. Entries close June 26th, so they have to be photo ready by then. I'll have a couple more weeks after then to fully complete them.

And this is what the inside of my sewing machine looks like after a couple of hours quilting. I clean my machine frequently - a cotton bud is better that the little nylon brush you get with the machine, and I put a drop of machine oil on to help pick up the lint. I remember hearing that the cleaning/oiling recommendations that come with the machine are based on usage of about 30 hours dressmaking per year. Obviously, my machine gets a lot more use than that.