Jo Avery – the Blog

QuiltCon Charity Quilt

I am so proud of our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild. We only started our group less than a year ago and yet look at this stunning quilt we made together!!

Have you heard about the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge? The Modern Quilt Guild asked groups to make a quilt to be exhibited at this year’s QuiltCon and then afterwards to be donated to a local children’s charity of your choice. The MQG chose the palette of colours and also stipulated that the design should be ‘off-grid’.
After an initial discussion and encouragement from our secretary Jane, who volunteered to co-ordinate the project, we decided to ‘go for it’!

We ordered the Kona solids first. I had some in stock and bought the others from Simply Solids and The Village Haberdashery (both fab online stores!) as I couldn’t get all the shades in one place. We raided our stashes too and matched some prints.
Back in November we held the first of our ‘sew-ins’. There were all held at my studio but I only managed to get along to the first. Helen, Margaret, Sheena, Katie, Fiona and myself had a fab evening cutting and piecing these improv blocks. We decided to produce 4, 8 and 12 inch blocks to hopefully make piecing them together a bit easier.
They are pinned up to the light grey fabric which we had decided should be our background. 
We made a lot of blocks in 2 hours!
Another sew-in was held with other members of our group, Jane, Lesley, Barbara and Janice, plus Sheila who was taking the photo. They worked really hard but we still needed one more night.

A heroic effort was needed as time was getting short. One more sew-in was arranged this time just Jane, Helen, Fiona and Anne.

Look at the time on the clock below!  They didn’t stop sewing till nearly midnight!!!

But we were nearly there! Jane took the quilt top home and worked on the last few bits. At last it was finished and could be passed on to Tatyana.
Oh Tatyana, how lucky we are to have you in our quilt guild!! Not only does Tatyana have a long arm quilting machine, but she also happens to be one of the most talented quilters I have ever seen!

So Tatyana popped the quilt on to her long arm and worked her magic.
By now we had about a week left before we needed to send this to the USA and Tatyana works full-time! But she managed it and it’s amazing!!

The quilting is so perfect and accentuates the geometric design so well.

Tatyana also bound the quilt and Jane sewed on the sleeve and label and posted it off.
A wonderful collaborative team effort but Tatyana and Jane really did more than their fair share – thank you so much from all of the rest of us!!

I am totally in love with this quilt and wanted to share it with you here.
And of course I am going to be able to see this hanging with all the other charity quilts in Austin in a month’s time!!!
If you are on Instagram check out the other charity quilts by using the hashtag #quiltconcharityquilt. You will be knocked out by all the stunning quilts – same palette, very different results!

But as I said before I am very proud of our group, especially as I think this may be the only UK entry (correct me if I’m wrong please!)!

14 comments

  1. Well done, it's lovely. I know we have not done one in London and haven't seen any other posts so think you are right to say you are the only UK guild.

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