Siblings Together Quilts and Labels

If you grew up with siblings, as I did, the thought of being separated from them is awful. The charity Siblings Together makes it possible for siblings who have been separated from each other by the care system to share some quality time together in the summer camps it organises along with other activities throughout the year.

I originally read about it in Lynne's post here - she was inspired to ask for donations of quilts for children taking part in the summer camps so that they would have something to call their own and to bring them happy memories. You can admire the quilts that have been made in the flickr group, and on Siblings Together twitter feed.

Lynne's post was the incentive I needed to make my first full size quilt.  This year I'm helping out by sending out labels for the quilts.  As before, these have been generously printed for us free of charge by Spoonflower - our contact Becca has written a lovely post about it on the Spoonflower blog and is already planning to make a quilt with her friend for next year's camps.

If you have made, are making, or can be persuaded :-) to make a quilt for this great cause and would like a label please let me know in the comments or by email to catherine [at] knottedcotton [dot] com.  Postage will cost 62p in the UK - if you are overseas I can let you know accordingly.  And if you plan to deliver it at FQR, you will also be able to collect a label from Lynne there - just let us know so that we can be sure to have them available.

Siblings Together Quilt 3 - Through the window

 I had hoped to finish this up on Friday, but it's done, Hooray!, and I'm linking up to Plum and June's Let's Get Acquainted linky, hosted today by Alyce at the lovely Blossom Heart Quilts.  If you are visiting - hello!  This quilt is for the charity Siblings Together (find out more  here).

 It is made using a bundle of Joel Dewberry's Aviary I won in a giveaway at Red Pepper Quilts, and I struggled to think how to use such large prints before settling on a window-pane design.  I like the thought of looking out at the little birds.

I bound it in the same white as the body of the quilt (Klona cotton), but I added in scraps of the patterned fabric on each side.

It is backed with Ikea Nummer...

and you can just make out the little cross stitches hand-tying it together in the patterned blocks where I didn't want to machine quilt.  I unpicked and redid my first attempt after Karen very kindly wrote to say how she did it here.  These stitches took me a whole afternoon - there were 80 of them!

I also unpicked the lines of hand-quilting I tried in the wider white sashing when my daughter, who had been watching me work, said in a very kindly voice "well, it's not what I would have chosen to do, but it looks very nice"!

I hope the teenage girl who will receive this quilt through the charity Siblings Together likes it.  Someone does. These fabrics have really grown on me and I'd rather like to keep it too!

I just have to wash it and post another pic (or ten) of it looking crinkly.

You can see some of the great quilts people are making for Siblings Together in the Flickr Group.

WIP Wednesday

[edited: managed to post with a para and photo missing. Trying again.]

Thank you very much to everybody who commented on my last post and made such helpful suggestions for quilting this Siblings Together quilt - I really appreciate it.

I'm back with an update!    I was supposed to be working yesterday but was stuck in with an ill child so, I spent the day tenderly ministering seized the chance and went ahead and did some machine quilting.  I pretty much stuck to my original plan and started by shadow quilting the patterned rectangles.

I then went twice round each block of four.

And then once round the outside of the whole thing.

I'm a bit concerned by the puffy central cross (possibly I just should have ironed it before photographing. And photographed it in the sun.).  Some hand quilting would definitely help knock it down, but at the moment I really like the unfussy simplicity and quiet plain-ness of it.

The final decision still to be made though is what to do with the patterned blocks. I didn't want to quilt them and Marit and Sandra had suggested hand tying them, which is the perfect solution.  I tried a couple of things and unpicked it, then I tried some cross stitches.

Something along these lines is definitely the way to go but I am worried it looks a bit crap and have to do a bit more experimentation!

After that I just have a bit of snagging to do.  It's my mission to have this done, dusted and washed by Friday since I only seem to be capable of working on one thing at a time (thanks for your tolerance:-)) and am itching to start a new project.  I'm linking up with the awe-inspiring lists of WIPs at:

WIP Wednesday

I have a work in progress (happy singing).  Do you remember that ages ago I won a whole bundle of Joel Dewberry Aviary from Rita at Red Pepper Quilts?

I decided to make this into a quilt for Siblings Together but have really been struggling to think how to use these big directional prints. I wanted to do something really clever but dithering over it was getting in the way of other stuff so I decided just to make a very simple quilt that makes me think of a large window pane.

This is my design floor (haha)...

I have to lay everything out while I'm working or else I lose track of what I'm doing so I take each piece in order from the living room through to the dining room where the sewing machine is, then back to the living room again.

It's perhaps not very exciting, but with a wide white border, and maybe some hand quilting, it should be okay!

Linking up today!

Siblings Together Linky at Lily's Quilts

Earlier this year, Lynne met one of the trustees of the charity Siblings Together, and learned about the summer holiday camps they run to reunite siblings who are in care and have been separated.  They thought it would be lovely if every child who attended one of the camps over the summer could take away a quilt of their very own.  This lovely idea blossomed and many, many beautiful quilts have been made - each with a label with a space for siblings to write messages for each other. 

Lynne has invited people who made or contributed towards quilts to link up and celebrate this fantastic group achievement.  I hadn't made a full-size quilt before but I really wanted to be involved - I grew up with three siblings and though we fought and scratched and bickered I would have hated to be separated from them.  I made two quilts:

Star pieced using fabric donated by Vicki

Quilt for a teenage boy

I'm just happy but not surprised, that this project has been so successful and glad to have been able to join in.

In her post today Lynne is also publicising the launch of 100 Quilts for 100 Kids,

 so do have a look - and she is offering a giveaway of lovely fabric.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Siblings Together Quilts One and Two are now both labelled and posted off to the charity today.  Could it be that I haven't already posted hundreds of pictures of these quilts?:-)   I thought I'd post a couple more of Two, just so, this time, you get to see my toes braving the ridicule of a group of teenage girls while I tried not altogether successfully to do artistic...

This pic was taken by willing helper, Sprog 1

It's so difficult to take a beautiful shot of a quilt (well it is for me!)  Do you have an all-time favourite quilt photo - one of your own you're proud of, or someone else's?  This, by Katy Ginger Monkey,  is one of mine.  I think the combination of sumptious velveteen and concrete minimalism is utterly inspired.

Another couple of stops today on the Let's Get Acquainted blog hop -  Jodi from Tickle and Hide 
and Libby from Miss Beau Jangles  

Jodi makes beautiful children's clothes - like these linen pinnies - and lovely colourful quilts.  I'm looking forward to seeing her tutorial.    Check out Libby's New York Beauty quilt - and she has a great post and tutorial showing how she makes bead bags for the Beads of Courage charity.

Done and dusted!

Siblings Together 2 came out of the wash nicely crinkly and lo and behold, the sun has come out!  Here it is:

Siblings Together 2 - now with bigger toes

It is backed with bits of an upcycled duvet cover in a kind of pale denim colour which goes really nicely with the Klona solids.  I really like this quilt - though it has some imperfections where the quilting isn't very neat or where I ran out of spool thread and the join isn't as tidy as I'd like. I'd show you if it was for me but it doesn't seem quite right to point them all out on a quilt that is a gift, so luckily I'm off the hook and you will never know!  It's not too bad and I don't think the teenage boy I've made it for would either notice or care!

Here's a pic showing the backing fabric and the nice labels that Lily and Laura put together.

Now that I've finished 1 and 2 and have only to post them off, I feel free to make a quilt for me!  On my To Do list for ages has been a quilt to cover the living room sofa (keeps the biscuit crumbs out of the cracks). I am thinking of using blue/green/acqua and neutrals for a stack of coins-type affair, with linen sashing.  I have virtually no experience of sewing with linen, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Also on my To Do list are three Pay It Forward Gifts for Fiona, Kay and Caroline and I will be in touch to ask for your addresses.

Before I sign off, please hop over and check out Nik from Bold Goods and Alyssa from Pile O Fabric who are next up on the Let's Get Acquainted bloghop.  I love Nik's I-Spy Quilt and Alyssa's Color in Motion Quilt and the tutorials they have come up with for the hop (a baby quilt, and a children's book bag) are great.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Today is a good day for curling up on the sofa under a quilt and looking at all the beauties on show at the marvellous

I would feel very proud if I had made any of them so I'm a bit nervous about linking up, but on the other hand, I have just made my first one (apart from 2 dolls quilts and a mini, which I entered in the Modern Mini contest, and was then really embarrassed afterwards as it's not modern at all).

Maybe people who have already made 10s of quilts still remember how excited you are at finishing your first one. Or maybe that's just me! Or perhaps that feeling never goes away? Anyway, this is it:

This is my favourite photo because of the little fingers and toes, whose owners were being unusually co-operative.

The quilt was made for the charity Siblings Together, which you can read about here - another reason why this quilt is very important to me.   The coloured fabric in the middle was donated by Patchwork Queen.   I thought that I could probably manage a quilt based on HSTs and started off with a star in the middle because I felt this sent a positive message. I cut what I had and laid it out in two early designs - at that point I asked for advice from fellow Bloggers!  The most popular one ended up like this - part Star and Chains, part one version of Star of Bethlehem, part Swoon.  More details are here. Because I wasn't making the quilt for me, I really didn't want to mess it up - this made it a great learning experience.

I'm now on to my second quilt and looking forward to the one after that:-)

If you are visiting from Amy's thank you very much for coming over to take a look.  Now I'm just off to do some visiting.

Siblings Together Quilt 2

One of my daughters was off school with a cold yesterday. I should have been working so it wasn't ideal but when she said she didn't feel well it did occur to me that this would mean a day of sewing - hooray!  Do you think that's terrible ?:-)

What with the terrible hardship of a day stuck at home and all I got the squares cut at the weekend sewn into HSTs and auditioned different layouts for a new Siblings Together quilt for an older boy:

before abandoning these layouts and going for a semi-random one.

My lovely Backstitch Hurricane Sea Bundle has been waiting for a good project since I was lucky enough to win it a while back in a giveaway offered by Betty at Anything Goes.   (Check out her amazing quilt for Siblings Together with its fluffy backing.)

Backstitch is run by one of my cousins (she wasn't involved in the giveaway at all - no fixing!), but I can truthfully say that I am enjoying working with these Klona cottons - I think they are very slightly thicker than standard patchwork cotton which made it easier for me to cut them and get a good crisp seam.  They don't seem to fray much either and the colours are wonderfully vibrant.  I'm thinking of sashing and binding the quilt with the leftovers from the same bundle.

This weekend...

...there was, unexpectedly, some sunshine, which meant I could show you some more toes (and yet more quilt - I promise this is the last of it for a while):

Then, as expected, this happened:

and it was just the excuse needed to spend an afternoon turning this:

into this:

I hope you had a good one too.

Fresh out of the wash and still in one piece!

I hope you're not sick of this already.   Probably it seems as if I'm jumping up and down on the spot shamelessly shouting "Me! Look at me!  I made a quilt! Me!" but I am so happy.  Look!  I made a quilt! 

This is the first full size one I've made and I can't be too insufferably smug because it's full of bits that aren't very professional.  Some of the points don't meet up and it would have been a lot more classy if I'd given more thought to the direction of the prints.  The most annoying mistake I made was somehow to include a small lump of coloured fluff in between the backing and wadding. It shows through and looks as if a spider has crawled in there and died.  My husband suggested I do key-hole surgery on it, but I think it will have to stay there.

It was a great learning experience because I am not naturally organised or meticulous, but the quilt is going to such a good cause and I wanted it to be right.  If I'd been making it for myself I would have cut all the corners (and probably all the points), but I really had to buckle down and try and do it properly. 

Geeky details: The quilt is approximately 55 inches square.  The coloured star was pieced from fabric very generously donated by Patchwork Queen who sent me this lovely package - I picked out some and all the rest has gone off to Trudi Quilting Prolifically for her Siblings Together granny squares.  I quilted it in the ditch round all the stars within stars and then round and round the rest, with organic (ie wonky) lines.

The binding is a Riley Blake stripe which, of course, I now wish I'd ordered more of.

 I just noticed the cat hair...

I used the calculator here to work out the amount of binding fabric needed.

You're only spared further artistic shots of it on a beach, or hanging over my clematis, because it is foul weather and the forecast is awful for the whole weekend!  I might just have to take a few more pictures of it before it goes off to its new home, though.

Have a great weekend.

Quilted and bound!

A rainy day - no gardening and the Siblings Together quilt is quilted - sew, lift foot, turn, heave, bundle, turn, drop foot, sew etc, etc!

 I have never quilted a real quilt before - I found it very (very) hard.    At one point I had most of the quilt held under my chin while I used both hands to guide it - good thing only the cat was here to see.  My machine, which is quite basic, coped admirably except that I had to unpick one quilting line which ran round the whole quilt as the tension had gone horribly wrong.  I don't know why - I changed the bobbin and it was okay after that.  Not only is it quilted but the fabric for binding arrived from Utah yesterday and it is actually bound.  

I machine bound it using this tutorial where you stitch the binding to the back, flip it over to the front and stitch again.  I really want to jump up and down shouting how marvellous this method is - no hand sewing, no trying to stitch in the ditch and catch the binding at the back without being able to see it.

I'd like to post a pic of the whole quilt, but I'd better wash it first and make sure it doesn't fall apart.  Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

I've also quilted the Backstitch Klona Swatch Card mini quilt with wavy lines; much easier than the other one! I don't mind the fact that it's bumpy and irregular and I love it just for the colours.  If I get round to it any time soon, I think I will bind it with natural linen.  The fabrics are in the same order as the swatch card, so I can still use it for colour reference.