Charity Quilt - Siblings Together

This is my 3rd year supporting the great work of this charity - and being part of a wonderful 'online' Quilt Bee. Each month - mine was January - the Queen Bee decides on a block and the other bees make it, send it to you and you make the quilt from them.

For the tutorial of my block, please see this post:

A simple design and I just asked the bees to make scrappy blocks in red, yellow, green, orange or blue. A big block - unfinished at 18.5" - and with 12 of us in the Bee, it was always going to finish a good size. Bridgid from Australia joins in too so when she and one of the bees sent me two blocks and a newbie follower on IG asked if she could make me one too, I ended up with 16! Aren't they all fabby?

I went to Simply Solids last week for a free motion quilting class with Charlo from Quiltification (what a small world; she's in the other Siblings Together Quilt Bee) and whilst I'm very comfortable and competent in stippling, the class gave me the confidence to try 'new shapes' and I immediately put it to use on this quilt:

And here it is in all its glory yesterday in the morning sunshine in Wales - finishing at 72" square, I think it will make a great quilt for an older child:

I kept the backing gender neutral - a fabby bargain from Fabric Guild - beautiful fabric and I also used the off cuts for the binding:

LOVE IT. 

Thank you to all the kind and talented bees for their beautiful blocks. And a reminder of why we give these quilts:

Linking up with Sarah @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Gifts for 'Chernobyl' children 2017 ...

Please see these two posts from last year for the tutorials for a patchwork tote bag and table mat. The ladies who volunteered to help me make each of the 17 children visiting North Wales from Belarus / Ukraine a bag and mat were very kind and very talented.

Here are the lovely children (and helpers) with their bags last Summer:

They absolutely loved their gift bags - each contained a table mat to take home to their Mother / Grandmother, a patchwork bag, some sweets and either a tissue holder or wallet.

They were such a hit, Gerrie (chair of the North Wales Chernobyl Children's Lifeline), asked me if we could do it again this year. Of course we can - as soon as I put the request out on my Instagram for this year's group of children, I had a host of wonderful quilters ready to sign up again. 

The requirements are the same as last year - if you can make a bag and mat - great - if you can only make one - that's also fantastic. We have 22 volunteers this year and 14 children (aged between 9 and 11: 12 girls and 1 boy - and an older boy who is 14) so any extras will be gifted to the helpers and / or given to the children with siblings back home.

A nice size finish for a tote bag is 14" long by 12" wide with nice long handles (27") and a table mat 16" square or bigger would be lovely.

This year, I have varied my makes and I used a Moda Charm Pack (generously gifted by one of my dear IG friends, Katrina) to make two tote bags - one for one of the children and one for one of the helpers:

I have made a slightly larger table mat - 20'5" x 20.5" - which I quilted with Aurifil Rainbow thread (it's my new favourite now):

Nothing will go to waste - everything we make will be so gratefully received, I promise you.

Thank you all so very much - I will tag all my helpers for 2017 on Instagram  - please use the hashtag #ccllnorthwalesquiltbee - and I have created a link up so the bloggers can share their makes here:

An InLinkz Link-up