Sewing day in Churchover

Project Linus is a charity which seems to inspire so many people, and this week has seen several of them!  Julie, who lives in the village of Churchover, kindly offered her village hall for a Linus sewing day.  What a treat - a whole day's sewing and no interruptions!  The hall was well equipped (it even had a bar, but we resisited the temptation to investigate it!) and there was plenty of space.

 Jill wanted to get to grips with Mile a Minute, and there were plenty of crumbs and strings for her to practice with.  Julie took a bag of small squares and arranged them beautifully into a charming cot quilt top.

 Paula chose a bag of 12.5" orphans, and would you believe it, when she took them all out, there were 23!  Why oh why is it that leftover blocks never seeem to be in useful numbers?  But it didn't faze Paula: she took the 6.5 bag and made a four-patch for the final block!

Here is the final arrangement - fabulous!  Some of the blocks look as if they were made for a sampler or sew a row, but they play beautifully together.

 












Jane discovered that the snooker table was a perfect size and height for layering up quilts.  She layered up this panel and another top, quilted one and took them home for binding. 

Julie started by sewing half square triangles into windmills, but once the snooker table was free, decided to take advantage of the opportunity to practice layering up.  She got on so well that she was able to start to quilt it too!  

Liz was happy putting orphans together, and sewed them on her gorgeous Featherweight sewing machine. 

 Debbie, a new quilter popped in and brought her first ever quilt to donate to Linus!  How generous is that!   

 And talking of generosity, Sue has given me this beautiful little Singer Starlet (with all the attachments and even the manual!) for people to use at Linus workshops.  She is a starlet herself!  Thank you so much, from me, from Debbie (who was the first person to use it) and from all the children whose quilts will be sewn on it!  And a big thank you to the ladies who came to the sewing day.  We'll have another one later in the year.

Quilts out and in

Some while ago, I was contacted by Chloe, who lives abroad and wanted to make some quilts for Linus.  Her question was, would I accept them from her?  Of course, the answer was a resounding yes, please!  Well, it's taken a while to get them delivered (via a local friend) but yesterday they arrived safely, and boy, was it worth the wait!

Here are the three cute little prem quilts, made from gorgeous Easter fabric and Paddington fabric.  Perfect for new babies.  Thank you so much for making these quilts, Chloe, they are perfect!

Recently I was contacted by Mary, from Surestart, to see if they could have quilts to give out to the children they work with.  I was happy to say yes, and so met her outside Frankie and Benny's at Meridian (lots of parking there, and it's near her home).  Here we are with a quilt Paula made.  It clashes a bit with my coat!

And I just had to share this beauty with you.  Paula put it together (she is tireless!) but lots of people made some of these scrappy blocks.  It looks so bright and cheerful, and is a good size for a teenage boy.  Many thanks to Paula, Chloe and all the people who have worked for Linus this month! 

Bumper pile of donations

The pile of Linus quilts was getting rather large, so I rang Sue from ADAPT to see if she needed any more quilts. She was keen to take as many as I could give her, which was a total of 40 quilts! (There were actually more, but I had run out of labels!)

Here she is with a lovely gender-neutral quilt, which Paula made, as an example. (You can just see one of the piles of quilts on the settee behind her.) She said there were 1,600 premature babies born in Leicestershire last year, which means an awful lot of quilts! Have a look on ADAPT's website and see the work they do.


Mandy also took 5 quilts to the Looked After Children's Services in Kettering, but I forgot to take a photo. As you know, LAC are very close to my heart as they often don't have loving families, and I think they need a special hug which only a quilt can bring.

2011 roundup

What a fabulous year for Project Linus in Leicestershire! We have had a total of 243 beautiful quilts donated to children in need of a hug. It's slightly less than last year's total, but then last year we had an unprecedented number of quilts. This year's quilts were donated to children from ADAPT (premature babies), Credo Care (special needs children moving from local authority care into fostercare), Looked After Children in Kettering and Leicester, Women's Aid (children in the refuges in Hinckley and Leicester), Leicester Royal Infirmary, the Diana Service for Children with Life-limiting Conditions and Clic-Sargent. Wow! That's a lot of extra hugs going out there.
I would like to say special thank yous to all the people who have helped in any way, by donating fabric or stuff for my 'rummage box', by buying things from the rummage box, by making blocks, joining blocks, making tops, donating UFOs or tops, or by making quilts. Also those who have been to any of the workshops and submitted to being bossed about by yours truly!
Thank you, thank you, thank you and long may it continue! Happy New Year and happy quilting.

Qults for Women's Aid

Last week I contacted Women's Aid to see if they needed any quilts for the children in their refuges, and the answer was a resounding 'yes please!' I took 25 quilts for them, which was a blessing, as I have so many quilts here, it would have been impossible for my son to sleep in his bed at Christmas.

Here is Kate holding up just one of the quilts. The reason I have so many, is that I have been over to Shepshed, to 'Quilting Together' and brought back 45 quilts (luckily quite a few of them were prem quilts, or we'd have had to extend the house!) all of which were of the most fabulous standard. This nursery rhyme quilt was one of them.

This is a panel, beautifully hand quilted.Choppy stars with the design echoed in the plain blocks - a great quilt for a boy!Another choppy stars quilt, but looking much more dramatic, and sashed with cornerstones.Anbother panel - don't they look lovely when they're quilted?Mile-a-Minute on point with spacer blocks. You can just see that letters, numbers and simple designs have been quilted in the cream blocks. It makes a simple quilt extra special!A scrap quilt with a difference - Chinese coins stripped with hot pink. Bound to be snapped up by a Barbie Girl!Blue strippy with dogs! What a clever way to use up scrappy blocks and a small piece of novelty fabric! The red border adds extra pizzazz!

A medallion quilt for a Star Wars fan. The colour choices here are perfect!Black, white and red always make a dramatic, masculine-looking quilt. The border and red binding really set it off.Some farm animal pictures bulked out to make a super quilt for a nature lover. Love the borders top and bottom.I recognise these blocks, as they were donated by someone who had done great work making them. They've gone together beautifully with the light sashing allowing them to shine, but kept in trim by the purple border. Smashing.A cute quilt for a small child, with 3-D prairie points to play with. More Mile-a-Minute with a subdued colour palette. The sashing compliments the colours in the blocks.And the last photo for today is of school-related images. Not sure how well that will go down, but the colours will certainly brighten a child's day!

Many thanks to all the ladies from Quilting Together for their lovely quilts, their lovely welcome, and the lovely way they dive into my donated scraps and not only take lots away, but then come back with more fabulous quilts!

Quilts for vulnerable children

I had a call yesterday from Micheala from Catch-22 to see if I thought the children she works with would be eligible for Linus quilts. If, like me, you've never heard of this organisation, have a look here to see the kind of work that they do. As far as I'm concerned, vulnerable children like these are the ideal recipients of Linus quilts, as not only do they need the hug, but they also need the quilt!

Michaela kindly came to my house, and took 12 of the largest quilts I had (for young people aged 16 and over) and six cot quilts, as some of these youngsters are already mums. So if anyone out there has any large quilts or a good pattern which knits up big, please let me know!

Another TWG workshop!

There was an emergency call from my Mum last week, hoping I could do another quilting workshop with the Chesterfield Townwomen's Guild, as their booked person had had to cancel.
I need to find out how to say 'no' (anyone out there with tips to help me?!) as it's a 120 mile round trip, but the promise of lunch with my parents was tempting, so off I went with my squares of Vilene and a bag of blue strings.
They were a lovely friendly group of ladies, and here they are all hard at work. I rather optimistically brought 49 squares, hoping for a good-sized quilt (blocks are 6" finished).They were very diligent about mixing up the fabrics and the values, to produce blocks which would go together well.My Mum, in the blue, helped out with the teaching, and we got on well. I pinned the completed blocks onto the back of a quilt I had brought as an example, and they quickly mounted up.Here are the blocks close up. They'll look even better when they're sewn together. There was a total of 20 blocks made in a two hour period, and the prize for the fastest worker went to Doreen who made five blocks. Well done, ladies. This will make a great quilt for anyone who likes blue!