Quilters for Charity: Use Your Leftover Fabric to Fund Alzheimer's Research

While searching for quilter-oriented charities, I stumbled across something fantastic-the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative'sPriority: Alzheimer's Quilts! This group collects tiny art quilts which they then auction off to raise money for Alzheimer's research.

I've done charitable quilting before by making baby quilts and the like. Yet those projects often need matching fabrics and have simple designs.

AAQI quilts, on the other hand, are an opportunity to use tiny scraps and let out my creative side. When finished, they must be no larger than 9" x 12" and must "fit into a flat cardboard mailer without folding or scrunching." They encourage wild and intricate work (as long as it'll survive mailing) and detailed quilts often raise more money in their auctions.

But if you're a new quilter, they'll be more than happy to take your simple, pretty quilt. If someone will buy it, that's another $15 or so raised for research. And as you learn, your donations can earn more and more money for research-some lovely creations sell for $100 or more.

So far, I've made one simple patchwork, one strip-quilted, two fall-themed patchworks, one flower appliqué and one butterfly appliqué. And I've barely gotten into my stash.

Here are three tips from my experience so far:

First--one great way to stock up on materials, if you don't already, is to save the extra batting and backing from your bigger projects. I save all decent-width, say 7" or more, backing/batting (in a basket/bag respectively).

Normally I wouldn't need them, but they come in handy here. Not only can you bust your stash of pretty fabrics, but you can get more use out of materials you've bought for you bigger projects and otherwise might throw away.

Second--binding isn't a good idea for these little ones. It looks clunky. When making my bigger quilts, I always bind the edges. But here, I use the laying technique which I also do with baby quilting.

Place the right sides of the quilt face and backing together and then lay the batting on one side. Then sew a ½ inch or so from the edge, leaving a little space to turn the quilt right-side up and blind stitch it closed.

Third--with quilts this small you probably don't need to actually quilt them. I quilted a few and left some of the busier ones alone.

Want ideas? AAQI has a gallery of their Priority: Alzheimer's quilts, and links to sites with useful patterns. The instructions for making a donation quilt can be found here. The gallery of sold quilts can also help you figure out what you work might be worth.

So use up your stash, give to charity, and perhaps you'll even benefit from the fruits of this research!