the Xenia Quilt

Please bear with me as I find my footing with this new blog.  I've always preferred to be creative with my hands instead of my words, so I believe most of my posts will be short & picture heavy. 

For a start, I thought I would share a little more information about my Xenia Quilt pattern.  
I have shared this before on Instagram, but stores disappear after 24 hours & it will be nice to have a permanent record of it somewhere!

I have a very good friend named Joy - we've known each other since 2008 & have kept in touch even though we live in seperate states & have ended up traveling different paths - and she is just the most sweet, bubbly, happy, wonderful human you will ever meet.  
She has two daughters & (at the time of this post) a son on the way! 
But her second daughter has some medical issues....

I am not close enough to offer food, baby sitting, hugs, or grocery runs while they hop in & out of the hospital, but I still wanted to help.
So I got permission from Joy to share part of their story & to name a quilt pattern after Xenia.

In 2019 Xenia was hospitalized six times to address persistent failure to thrive as well as other symptoms that a myriad of specialist struggled to find the cause of. Eventually, she had neurosurgery to help alleviate pressure from a brain malformation that was contributing to her poor growth, causing apnea spells, and triggering extensive(hours long) irritability spells due to the intense amount of pain she was frequently in.

Since then she has had four brain surgeries.  She's not even two years old!  

So of course, not being close enough for physical comfort, I decided to make them a quilt.  I wanted to have something simple, sweet & comforting.  
I had been playing with the idea of making a fatter, shorter heart than what's out there for some time & this seemed like the perfect time to jump in & create one!

In case you stop reading here, I want you to know that all of the Xenia quilt sales go straight to the family to help offset their medical bills.

Back to the quilt - after a few false starts (I've only done half rectangle triangles once!) I got it looking how I wanted & went shopping for fabric that reminded me of Joy.

I picked owls (her first daughter's quilt), a sailor that looked kinda like her husband, foxes (second baby quilt).... then everything else was Earth tones, since I know she's a fan of those. 
I also brought my mother along on my shopping trip, since I'm not a usually brown/tan/orange person ;)

I got some hints from friends about how to actually be a long arm quilter (which, let's face it, I tried to implement but just ended up winging it & calling it good. I made it with love, it may not be the most cohesive or prettiest quilting out there, but I did it ALL myself!)

I mailed it off with some masks (Covid hit the US around this time) for the whole family, a pound of coffee, a note & lots of love.

It has been a month since the Xenia quilt was available for purchase & at the end of every month I will be donating the entirety of the sales from this pattern to their GoFundMe.

I plan to do a quilt along with pattern in June & July!  I hope to get a little extra to send to them during that time. 
And if you decide to participate, you'll get a fun quilt out of it!

If you'd like more information about Xenia's current condition or if you'd like to donate straight to them, I've included the link here.

Now for some more eye candy!
& thanks so much for reading.
x Stephanie