Here is a tie quilt I recently made for a charity auction. I am thinking it's probably the only St. Patrick's SpongeBob quilt in existence!
Last month I showed you a
SpongeBob men's necktie that I made for a local man to wear to his daughter's funeral. I met with that family since I posted the tie and they thanked me for making the tie. They were really touched by my gesture. Their daughter was a friend of my oldest child. They loved the necktie so much that the dad got a tattoo of SpongeBob that was in the fabric design. Instead of a thumbs up, he had them put a shamrock in SpongeBob's hand because their daughter was part Irish and born on St. Patrick's Day. The mother and several of the girl's friends got shamrock tattoos.
Since then, I wanted to do more for the family. I tried to put myself in their shoes, and I just could not imagine losing a child like that. I wanted to do everything I could to comfort them. A few weeks ago I saw a notice about a fundraiser that the family was putting together to raise money for disease awareness and research. They were looking for donations for a silent auction and I knew I had to sew something. I immediately knew it had to be something that had both SpongeBob and St. Patrick fabrics.
I contacted the friend who had requested the necktie in the first place and she said she'd go back to the fabric store and get more SpongeBob fabric. She got a yard of the same SpongeBob design that was used for the necktie and a yard of flannel for the backing. I had several St. Patrick's Day fabrics on hand and sat down to create a quilt design. I decided to make a small version of the quilt for the family to keep.
I washed and ironed the fabrics, cut out the pieces, and got stitching. The quilt tops stitched together quickly. I decided to sandwich the layers together with knots of embroidery floss because I had a limited amount of backing fabric. I bound each quilt with binding using the original SpongeBob fabric. I used
this tutorial for the binding.
I'm very pleased with how these quilts turned out. I took them over to the family last week and they were very appreciative. Nearly two months later and they are still very overwhelmed from losing their daughter. I had a conflict and was unable to attend the auction, but my friend who purchased the fabric did. She texted me asking what I thought a fair price for the quilt was. I suggested $50. She bought it for $100 and gave it to the family. She is such a sweet person and I was glad to have her as my partner in their project. I am going to keep my eye out for some SpongeBob fleece because I know the mother wants a tie blanket.
This was such a satisfying project. I want to find more causes to create for.
