Quilts for kindness - why you should be giving quilty hugs.

I once heard someone say that when you give a quilt your not actually giving someone something to sleep under instead your giving someone a big quilty hug. 

Which is kind of wonderful really isn't it?

I made this quilt for my friends at the craft cotton company and its going to a little boy who's poorly. All of the fabrics were from them and I especially like the spiderman print. 

I came up with the pattern myself and decided to keep things quite simple. These half square triangles work really nicely and sew up fast. It took a little while to make sure they were all pointing in the right direction though. 

The middle square has the young boys initial appliqued onto it. I used a wide zig zag to sew it on and I went over it twice to make sure its on securely. I'm really chuffed with how neat it turned out. Especially seen as I drew the B free hand because our printer wouldn't print the template I had fine.  

Its backed with a minky fabric that is the stuff of dreams. I just want to wrap myself up in it, have a cup of tea and nap the day away. Its so soft and squishy perfect for babies, or kids or......Grownups?

Quilting wise I kept things simple and just did the diagonals. To say this is the biggest quilt I've ever made it was actually the easiest to quilt. Bizarre huh?

I've got to say I really enjoyed doing this project. Its so nice to make a quilt for someone else and hopefully make them feel a bit better when their having a crappy time of it. 

Which leads me to my next bit. See here's the deal, a lot of people I know love quilting but truth be told there's only so many quilts one person/family can have. Which is why I'm suggesting that you keep quilting but try giving them away? 

There's lots of places and people who could probably do with a big quilty hug of their very own, but here's a few suggestions.

- Local hospitals. Its best checking their particular rules but our local hospital did except quilts especially in the neonatal ward. [Typically the neonatal ward looses a lot of their quilts because if a baby passes away the quilts etc are given to the family in a memory box]

- An elderly relative or neighbour. In England 22% of men and 28% of men aged 65 and over suffer from depression, imagine how lovely it would be to give them a quilt and let them know your thinking of them [You could also donate a quilt to your local care home]

- New born babies. This is something I personally do [and will be writing a proper blog post on soon]. 

- Project Linus. Project Linus are a group who donate quilts to sick children. They also donated a huge number of quilts to the victims of the Grenfell tower fire. To date they have donated 348,542 quilts to people who need them. 

And starting in issue 11 of sew inspired magazine they will be giving instructions to make a simple quilt with the hopes that people will donate it. This initiative is called quilts for kindness, the instructions will be simple enough for even beginner quilters to understand so everyone is welcome to take part.

So hopefully I've given you some ideas if you love quilting but are running out of room!

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx