Design Wall Monday-Charm School and Giveaway!

Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.  Kathleen Winsor

When I was a kid my sent one of my sisters and me to charm school.  I don’t know if she thought we were uncouth or if she was just trying to turn us into ladies.  It was held at Adler’s, a nice girls’ and women’s clothing store at Antioch mall and we learned social etiquette, manners, wardrobe tips and posture.  At the end of the class we had a fashion show and tea.  It’s been years  since I’ve heard of charm schools so I  just did a quick google search and there are still some around if you need some lessons in social graces.  I’m pretty sure my daughter would have just laughed at me if I’d suggested something like that to her.

What conjured up that old memory was that I spent a good part of the week working with charm squares—packs and packs of charm squares.  There were several of them in the box of stuff I’m trying to use up and I finally figured out quilts I could make from each of them. 

On Thursday’s post I showed the blocks made from Christmas charms made from a Nancy Halvorson line of fabric called Tidings.  I found a great border fabric, finished the top, layered it up and it’s now on the frame being quilted.  I’m using a pantograph on it so it’s a little slow going.

The second charm quilt is made from Marmalade fabric by Bonnie and Camille.  I used a pattern from the book Quilts from Sweet Jane.  I quilted this with vertical lines.  It’s the first time I’ve done that and I’m not sure I’ll do it again very soon.  It was hard to keep the lines straight and the fabric wanted to shift.  I stitched them random widths apart so it wouldn’t look funny if the lines weren’t the same width apart.

Next I pieced a top from a pack of charms called Baby Geniuses Grow Up. This is a pattern from Villa Rosa called La France.  I like this pattern because you can make a baby quilt with just one charm pack and 1-1/2 yards of fabric for borders and binding. And you can piece the top in under two hours!

Now I’m working on another quilt made from the pattern in the Sweet Jane book.  I don’t usually make the same quilt twice in one week but this is another one using Benartex charms.  Unlike Moda charm packs, which always have 42 charms, the number in these varies.  As it turned out, I had just enough squares to make this quilt.  Hopefully I can get them finished this week, then move on to something else—like jelly rolls!  Just kidding—I need to work on UFO’s.

Since this is charm week and I have an abundance of them, I’m giving away two Moda Marmalade charm packs to one lucky reader.  If you’d like to win these just leave a comment in the remarks.  I’ll use a random generator to pick a name on Friday and email the winner to get an address so I can send them on their way!

If you need a little inspiration this week, be sure to check out the other Design Wall Monday links at Patchwork Times.