Quilty Week

Since last Saturday most days this week have involved sewing of one sort or another.  Last Saturday I went to a Linus day of the local Project Linus group near Wimborne stitching Christmas quilts.  There were packs of ready cut pieces and basic patterns to sew together to make small quilt tops and together with some fleece fabric (in place of wadding and backing) and binding made really cheerful and cosy quilts.  These will be distributed to hospitals and refuges in the local area. Whilst attaching the link above I came across this BBC South Today report with Joan, Lourdes and Brenda who coordinate the making, collecting and distributing  of quilts in this area - here's the link to the You Tube video

I took one pack and made the quilt as far as attaching the binding by machine to take home and slipstitch the binding to the back of the quilt, which I finished on Saturday evening while watching Strictly Come Dancing. As you can see from the pics below the large square had owls on, well I had to take that pack to stitch together!

I then took another pack thinking it would make the same size quilt, but no, this was bigger! It was 5 blocks across by 5 blocks long and I could only half make the top.  So when I came home I sewed the rest of the quilt top together.

David was volunteering at Swanage Railway on Monday and Tuesday, so it gave me a chance to quilt the larger quilt and then I took it to a sew and natter afternoon on Tuesday at Seahorse Quilting.

Sorry the pic is a bit dark here, the days getting shorter I think the light was going when I took the photo.

During this week and the sewing time that I've I also made a couple of blocks for this month's block drive for Siblings Together group and a request for 2 12.5" Hunter's Star blocks. I love making blocks  and these were made in no time at all.

Another call was put out on Instagram to make some black and white half square triangle (HST) blocks and 16 patch blocks.  So I made a few of those, which will be going in the post tomorrow.

The blocks in both pictures are going towards Siblings Together's quest for 100 quilts before next year's summer camps which joins siblings together who are in the care system, which you can read more about in the link above.

If my modest contribution makes a difference to someone's life then it makes it all worthwhile.

In other stitchy news I'm managing to get more blocks sewn together for the Kingfisher Quilt - the quilt along having been back in July but I'm not doing bad at having made 38 diamonds out of 46, so they are piling up.  It won't be that long and I will have to think about fabric for the half diamonds to complete the rows when I come to join up.  I don't think that I have that much low volume fabric to make it random, so I may have to get metre-age to edge the diamonds.  I will be going to the Crafts 4 Crafters show next weekend so I might see something there - wait and see. This is my quilting project for Quarter 3 and I know this will go into Quarter 4 of my solo finish along.

As for the other items in this last quarter they have all been completed and gifted so thinking cap on for other things to finish in quarter 4 - which is a bit tricky as some things in progress are for Christmas!