QAYG tile block drive - one quilt finished!

I wrote on Monday that I had received five quilt as you go blocks from some lovely generous quilters.

Since then I have received even more!

Enough to finish one quilt already.

It didn't really take me long to add the sashing and stitch the whole thing together - in fact it took me less than one day !

Here are the blocks all trimmed and ready to be sashed.

And here they are sashed and bound - job done!  I love how these blocks came from a group of people but all blend together so well - bit like a community of quilters don't you think!  

Thanks to Joanne, Jennifer, Biff, and Linda for all the blocks - I hope I got that right !  

The good news is I have two more from Linda to start the next quilt.  I just need seven more blocks to join them - I used the blue one .....

If you want to make a block or two the tutorial can be found here.  I've linked it up on our Quilt Link Up Page here as no 50!  We are half way to our target of 100 quilts and I feel we should be celebrating!

Quilt Story - making something out of scraps!

I am trying to keep my scraps under control and thought a good way to do that was to use them to make quilts for Siblings Together.

I started making some little nine patch blocks last year.  I used my aqua, lime green and purple scraps for this project, plus Kona snow for the alternate squares.

I had them up on my small design wall behind the door to my sewing room.

They sat there patiently waiting their turn.

I recently decided that I would adopt them as a leader/ender project and gradually work my way through them.

But that is not in my nature....

They became my project and I soon had another quilt top ready to quilt up for Siblings Together.

I found some beautiful purple backing fabric.

I decided to quilt a cross hatch on the main part and just diagonal lines in the border.  I finished the quilt using the backing fabric as my binding!  

And there we have another quilt for Siblings Together.  

I linked this finished quilt for Siblings Together to the Quilt Link Up as part of the tally towards our 100 quilt target.  If you finish a quilt for the charity please link too - it will help us to count up how close we are to our target   !

Quilt Story - Siblings making a quilt!!!

Hannah and Tanya involved their kids in making a quilt for Siblings Together! What a great way to help youngsters understand the problems of others and how they can help.  Here is their story of a very special quilt!  Over to you Tanya:

Siblings Together is a charity I am quite passionate about, for two reasons.  Firstly, I have 2 children, and I see on a daily basis the benefits to them of living together and sharing the childhood experiences they share (both the good and not so good).   Secondly, I work with children in foster and adoptive families, and I am involved in trying to keep siblings together, and trying to maintain links between those who are not able to live together as children. Each of those children leaves a little imprint on my heart along the way.

So, this year I am trying to contribute towards five quilts for the charity.

The first one is particularly special because Hannah and I joined forces with our 4 children and the kids got involved to make this quilt.  (Please would the quilt Police turn away now, this is never going to win any awards for neatness of piecing, colour combinations, quilting quality or whatever other categories are assessed at quilt shows).  However, the love and enthusiasm and care that those children put into this will, I hope, more than make up for this when it is given at camp.

The two oldest children (aged 8) are members of our local young quilters guild, so they can use a sewing machine and have skills of choosing fabrics and putting them together, chain piecing, pinning, unpicking (they did a lot of that), and laying out blocks etc. 

The younger children were a good support crew and one sat on my knee for a long while we sewed the quilt top together.  We had a busy afternoon all of us together making this quilt top, and then feeling quite exhausted both families shared a lovely meal together.

Showing the quilt top – and underneath the backing (the children loved the elephant fabric)

The quilting was also a shared experience – but slightly more stressful for me!!  Having a keen 8 year old does not improve my fmq skills…..

Hannah bound the quilt…..

This will be sent on it’s way today – along with lots and lots of love…. x

In fact this quilt has already arrived at the charity HQ!  

Scrap Box Tutorial for Siblings Together: Scrappy Colour Box Rail Fence.

 Today we have  the second in our series of scrap box tutorials by Sarah of Sew me. Over to you Sarah:

I'm back today with a second tutorial for a block that will help you reduce your scrap boxes and make a funky, colourful quilt for Siblings Together.

The pic above shows two of the scrappy colour block rail fence blocks that this tutorial makes.  Again, no rocket science involved but it's all here for you if you fancy having a go.  This quilt was the inspiration for these blocks.  You need to have a wee peek just to see.

Anyway, while the inspiration quilt is all nice and regular sized pieces, I really wanted to crack into my store of scrappy strips of all widths and I imagine this would help a lot of you reduce your scrap mountains too!  So, for this block I worked in quadrants of single colour ways and strips of varying widths.  Go get yours and join me (and forgive for the terrible lighting in my tutorial pics).

Scrappy Colour Block Rail Fence Block

This will yield an unfinished block measuring 12.5" x 12.5" and uses scant 0.25" seams throughout.

You will need 6.5" lengths of scrappy strips in four different colour ways.

For each quadrant of your block take a number of 6.5" scraps in one colour and stitch them together along the longest side.  You will need enough strips so that your finished quadrant can be trimmed measure 6.5" square.  Just a tip: don't make the outer strips too narrow or you may lose them in your seam allowances.

Handy hint: This block will come together very quickly if you chain piece your strips in colour pairs.

Once your strips are pieced in each colour block, press the seams all in the same direction.

Then, trim each colour block to 6.5" square.

When you have all four 6.5" colour blocks made.  Lay them out as above, alternating the horizontal and vertical direction of the strips.

Stitch the top two quadrants together and then stitch the bottom two together and press the joining seams in opposite directions.

Pin the top row and bottom row together, nesting the seams that you pressed in opposite directions neatly.  Stitch together and press your centre seam open.

Now that you have all four colour block quadrants together all that remains is to trim the block to 12.5" square before you start on a second one! ;-)

Remember, this little tutorial is just to show you how easy it would be to make a fun quilt from your scraps for a very worthy cause.

My first scrap box block can be found here if you are interested.  As always, I am very happy for anyone to reference these scrap box block tutorials or indeed any of my block tutorials for use in your Charity Bees or even just your ordinary Bee groups.

There will be another block along soon, so keep reading!

Quilt Story - Around The World for Siblings Together

 I love receiving packages.  Sometimes I receive orphan blocks in the post from some kind generous person to make a quilt for siblings together.  Recently I received some trip around the world blocks from Cathy Ewbank - she is a lovely lady I met in person while making a dilly bag with Judy Newman.

Now these blocks have some friends from my lovely siblings together bee mate Joanne !   

And Merel, who runs a quilt shop called Birdblocks, in Amsterdam, sent some more....

I found some lovely fabric donated by Sarah/Jude through the #siblingstogetherdestash on Instagram which was perfect to back the quilt.  And then it was done!

  The ladies donating blocks and fabric to this fabulous cause are so lovely and supportive of our efforts - we really couldn't do it without them.   

I am happy to do my bit stitching it all together so we can notch up another quilt closer to our 100 quilt target this coming year.

I really seem to enjoy these collaborative efforts and along with my bee quilts it seems I hardly ever make a quilt on my own now!

If you have some unwanted blocks you can donate them - just leave a comment and we will be in touch. We also hope to have another destash so that is another option to pass them on.

 Or you might find renewed purpose and finish off the quilt yourself.  Please let us know you are making a quilt for Siblings Together.  

If you have photos of your project we would love to share them here on the blog and we welcome guest blog posts so everyone can share in the project.

  

Siblings Together Churn Dash Quilt Story.

 Back in 2013 Sarah of Sew Me put together these two gorgeous group quilts. Here's Sarah's story of how these two wonderful Siblings Together quilts came to be.

Wavy line quilted and orange basket weave print binding.

Wavy line quilted with tiny red gingham binding.

"Back in May 2013 I noticed a thread on the Siblings Together Flickr group seeking members for a new Bee to spend a year making quilts for the charity.  Reading the discussion thread I noted that many of those commenting loved the idea of contributing to the charity quilts but weren't in a position to be able to commit to blocks every month.  Seemed a shame to me to waste so much enthusiasm and so I added my own little discussion thread and posted on my blog inviting those who would like to make a one off block contribution to a quilt for an older boy to sign up to my Siblings Together Block Drive.

Of course, you folks were amazing and pretty quickly I had offers of more blocks than I needed to make the one quilt I'd planned.  There was nothing else for it but to go for two quilts!!  So, several months of block collecting later I had a pile of 57 funky churn dash blocks from 17 different volunteers to turn into these fun, colourful quilts which I am sure will be loved by their recipients at the summer camps this year.

I cannot thank the amazing ladies who contributed these blocks enough.  They flew in from all corners of the UK, the USA, Finland, the Netherlands and Australia.  It was entirely my pleasure and privilege to co-ordinate these quilts and to allow many of you the opportunity to be part of this year's Siblings Together quilt spree.  I think we did a good job ladies!!

All that remains is for me to package these up and send them on to Siblings Together HQ and to say one final, huge THANK YOU to all of you"

Isn't this a fabulous idea? If anyone reading this would like to set up your own block drive as Sarah did  let us know and we'll help promote it for you.

Quilt story - How some orphan blocks became a quilt top forSiblingsTogether

I received some orphan blocks some months back from my lovely friend and Bee a Brit Stingy beemate Catherine !

From early on I thought they would make a good border to a medallion quilt. I researched some complicated centre blocks but then I thought I should just keep it simple.   I made a quilt in my Siblings Together Bee out of this simple tile type block and I thought it would work here too.

As my donated blocks are orphans I don't have the fabrics these were made from so what could I use from my stash to make a quilt top?  I found what I had in the tones already used - they weren't an exact match but I find that a scrappy quilt is quite forgiving as long as you mix it up throughout the quilt.

Then I decided I wanted a colour that would bring a bit of a sparkle to the quilt!  I tried green but it wasn't working, then tried aqua, which seemed to bring that 'je ne said quoi'!

It was getting there but not big enough.

 When I asked for suggested borders on Instagram (nickyeglinton - if you want to find me) two were suggested : nine patches from Alison; and piano keys from Trudi !  So both went in the mix and I ended up with nine patch corner stones that echo my centre block and stripy piano key borders ...

I think I was right about that medallion style and my friends were right about those borders don't you? 

I just finished it off with a light orange plaid strip all the way round just to make it a smidge bigger and to tidy up all those stripy ends!   Less likely to stretch in ways I don't want it to.  

I was then kindly offered this fabric as backing for this quilt from  [IG account] @nantucks. [that macaroon bar has long gone by the way]

And then I quilted it and bound it in some leftover backing fabric.

This quilt is ready to be sent to Siblings Together.  Mission accomplished.

A quilt story from Jude!

Have you got a Siblings Together quilt story to tell?

If so, follow Jude's example and send us your text and photos, and we will publish it here on the blog.

I'm sure you will enjoy seeing what Jude has to share - thanks Jude! 

Hi, my name is Judith from Just Jude and it has been my privilege to be involved in Siblings Together from its inception.

When Lynn first put out the call for quilts, the response grew and grew.  At that time I was co-running a charity quilting bee called Bee Blessed, and the ladies there also got behind Siblings Together.

One of the highlights of the 2013 Fat Quarterly Retreat was seeing the donated ST quilts being handed over to Delma (from the Siblings Together charity).

And then started the Siblings Together Bees!  What a brilliant idea to get even more quilts made each year!

Last year I had the opportunity to join the Siblings Together Bee 2, and have had great fun making a wide range of blocks. 

In September I was Queen Bee, and I set the Mama Hen block from Lori Holt's book 'Farm Girl Vintage'.

My bee mates didn't disappoint, and a lovely family of hens came home to roost with me in Belfast!

I've recently got the quilt top to this stage, just needing to add a border to bring it up to size!

Also last year, I contributed another girly quilt to the 2015 ST camps, after being donated some fabric from a friend in Ireland.

Scrappy quilts are my favourite kind!  I always think something magical happens when seemingly 'random' prints and colours are unified with a background fabric or some other common denominator.

It is my hope and prayer that the time, love and joy that goes into making these quilts will be transferred as comfort and blessing to the children who receive them.

A Siblings Together Quilt Story.

This is the story of a quilt I made for the 2015 Siblings Together camps.

In the first year of quilts for Siblings Together I joined a bee orgainised by Lynne of Lily's quilts. We were immensley lucky to be donated fabrics by Moda with which to make our quilts. For my month of the bee we used S'more Love by Cosmo Cricket and I had a few fat quarters and some scraps left. Last year I decided to make a quilt with these left overs but didn't have enough to complete a whole quilt. Here's where a group of kind, generous ladies came to the rescue. I posted a photo of the fabics on Instagram and asked if anyone had some co-ordinating scraps they could donate. Of course the answer was "yes" and within a few days I received fabrics from Julie, Carol, Catrin, Jo, Mary and Sonia.

Here's the brightly coloured rail fence quilt I came up with.

If you would like to make a quilt to give some warmth and comfort to a child and help us reach our target of 100 quilts for Siblings Together in 2016 please visit the 100 quilts for 2015/16  page above for details.

We would love to hear your Siblings Together Quilts Stories so if you would like to write a post for the blog please leave a comment below or email the address at the top of the side bar and myself or Nicky will be in touch.

Maria.