Social Bite Village Quilt Drive Update

I have six beautiful new donated quilts to share with you but first I wanted to talk about the opening of the Social Bite Village!

The official launch happened over a month ago with a gathering of all the folks involved in the project plus lots of media and local dignitaries.

I attended with Jonathan and it was a hugely inspiring event!  The speeches, especially by the Social Bite co-founder Josh Littlejohn brought me to tears.

I am also incredibly proud of my husband for designing these houses and being so involved with the whole thing. Here he is standing in front of his original Tiny House, the NestHouse, which sparked off the whole idea of using Tiny Houses for the Social Bite Village when Josh saw it nearly two years ago now.

(photo by Murdo Macleod for The Observer).

I got to the launch early and, with help of a few of the volunteers, managed to put a quilt on each of the 20 beds.  It was the perfect finishing touch and they were all much admired and appreciated!

After the event the village was open to the general public for a few weeks and I got lots of great feedback on social media from people who had seen the quilts and had been especially touched by the fact these handmade quilts had been made and donated.

There has also been a lot of media coverage and I especially love this photo from The New Statesman of Sonny, an ex homeless guy and now a social bite employee, sitting on one of the beds with that amazing quilt by Sarah. You can read the whole article here.

A couple of weeks ago I collected all 20 quilts, brought them home and washed and tumble dried each one (along with the six new quilts).  They are now all ready for their new owners!  The first inhabitants are moving in later this month and I am planning to take the quilts along for a proper hand over.

This is what they look like in my spare room wardrobe!

Let’s take a look at the six new quilts I have received since my last SBVQD post…

This gorgeous mustard and grey cross quilt is by Jo Baird of Quilty Doings and is so modern and striking, thanks Jo!

Next up are three quilts by members of the Quirky Quilters of East Kilbride!

Led by the lovely Margaret Beggs, and containing quite a few regulars from my classes and the Stitch Gathering, this group has produced three beautiful quilts.

They had a recent exhibition and made the Social Bite Village Quilt Drive a feature with a little display to tell people about it.

Huge thanks for your Support ladies!

 

 

I think the orange one might just be my favourite out of these (no surprise there!) but they are all lovely and perfect the project.

 

 

 

This next quilt was donated by one of our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild members and local quilting teacher, Liz Duke.

I love your crazy patchwork blocks Liz! And the addition of red sashing really sets it all off.

And lastly this stunning wonky star quilt was anonymously donated at our shop.

All I know is that the maker comes from Orkney. So another huge thank you to this mystery quilter if you are reading this.  We all love your quilt!

And another big thank you to Jane, my shop manager, who kindly held these quilts up for me to photograph (now that my son and his partner have gone on their travels again!).

I’ll be back to report on the hand over of quilts soon and meanwhile they’ll be news related to charity quilt blocks in my next post!