Welcome to the brand new blog for the Siblings Together Quilt Group! Myself, Maria, Sewlovetosew and Nicky, mrsssewandsow decided it would be great to have somewhere as a base for the group: somewhere we can help keep the quilting community's motivation going to make quilts for the children helped by the Siblings Together charity.
We would love the blog to be a place for all you quilters to inspire others by sharing photos and stories about the quilts you've made for the charity. Here is a place we can ask each other for help when needed, whether that be for blocks for a group quilt, donations of supplies or perhaps a call for people in a locality to get together to make some quilts.
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| Some of the lovely Siblings Together quilts. |
Many of you may already be involved with making Siblings Together quilts and will know about the charity, but for those who are new to the world of Siblings Together quilts here's a quick explanation of what it's all about.
Siblings Together is a charity founded by Delma Hughes, which works to bring together siblings, separated by the care system in the UK.
The Siblings Together charity website explains that there were about 65,000 children in care in England in 2010 and over 40,000 of these children will have been separated from a brother or sister. This separation is often in addition to the breakdown in relationships with parents, which often happens with children in care. For more information please visit the Siblings Together website, which can be found using this link.
Delma and her team arrange summer camps where the children can get together to spend valuable, fun time with their siblings. In Delma's words:
"Our
camps are incredible; they are often the first time in years many have
shared more than an hour's contact together. It is often quite
emotional for them, they know what they have lost and our camps make
sure they can enjoy a wonderful shared experience together without
social workers, residential staff or foster carers' intrusions. They
can be a 'family' even for a short time. This can often be life
changing for them."
So, where do our quilts come in? It all started in 2012 when Lynne from Lily's quilts discovered, at a chance meeting, that Delma was trying to find
out whether it would be possible to get people to make a quilt for each one of
these children on the summer camps to keep, their very own
home-made quilt. Lynne decided to try and rally together a few quilters to make some quilts, by posting on her blog, and starting a Flickr group. Not surprisingly the quilting community responded wholeheartedly to her call and the children attending the camps were presented with their very own quilt. Not only those attending the camps in 2012 but in 2013, in 2014 and in 2015 too.
Please do take the time to visit the "About Siblings Together Quilt Group" page at the top of the blog where Lynne and Delma both speak immensely movingly, back in 2012, about the charity and the quilts.
Please keep re-visiting the blog as we will be adding more information about how you can help, and what other people have been doing.
We hope you are with us in supporting this worthy cause and help us in our aim to provide 100 Quilts for 2015/16! If you are, then please leave a friendly comment to let us know - your encouragement means a lot!
