Social Bite Village Quilt Drive 2019

Some of you may remember my call out for quilts for the Social Bite Village early last year, and then regular update posts showing all the beautiful quilts I received.

You can read the first post here and the post when the village opened here. If you want to see more quilts just enter ‘social bite’ in the search bar on the right.

It’s been nearly a year since the village opened and more quilts have been handed in to me so I took the 10 quilts featured in this post to the village last week.

Things are going really well there, I met some of the same residents as when we dropped the quilts off in August, plus new ones as some of the first residents have already moved on to permanent  homes. Unfortunately a few had decided that this wasn’t for them, though one of these had already changed their mind and came back to give it another try.  All the residents LOVE the quilts.  Apparently they all get very animated and excited when they get to choose their quilts.

Let’s look at the new quilts I dropped off in more detail…

The first three quilts pictured are all from the Fun with Fabric group that meets through the Kidzeco charity.

This is a social enterprise based in West Lothian with shops in Bathgate and Livingston. They were set up in 2010 for families who want to buy high quality pre-loved children’s clothes, toys and equipment at an affordable price.

This means that not only were these three gorgeous quilts all made from re-cycled fabric (all donated) but they were all made by beginner quilters!! A huge thanks to Glynne Blaik for overseeing these and bringing then over to me, I am so impressed with your group’s quilts Glynne!

I need to say another huge thanks to another group who have already given me a number of quilts.

This is the Quirky Quilters from East Kilbride who dropped off another 3 quilts a few months back, including this lovely Autumnal scrappy square quilt above, the striking floating squares quilt on the right, and the fabulous orange and blue quilt below, all perfect for the quilt drive.

Thank you so much again ladies!

The next one below is from another generous quilter who has already sent a quilt last year.

This blue and white beauty is from Jenny, The Lilac Cat, who also happens to be one of the coordinators of the Siblings Together Quilters. So kind of you Jenny to save a quilt for the Social Bite Village, thank you!

Last year I received a huge quilt top from a lovely lady in Canada called Bonnie McCaffery.

It just needed quilting but it was so big that we actually divided it in two (we = me and Jane at the shop) and sewed a border around each to make two quilt tops!

These went off to Kelly Orr, a member of the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild, who happens to have a long arm machine and who VERY kindly offered to quilt some of the charity quilts.

And then to make it even more of a team effort my sister Jane bound both quilts on a recent visit to me.  I love how many people joined in making these quilts and how it was even Transatlantic! Thanks so much to Bonnie, Kelly and both Janes!

Lastly this stunning vintage-style hexagon quilt was dropped off at the shop bearing a label of the group the made it, the Happy Quilters who meet at Heart of Scotstoun. What a lovely name for a quilt group! Thank you so much for your beautiful quilt.

We also added our own Social Bite Village Quilt Drive label (both the Janes were a huge help in sewing the labels on to all these quilts!), and then all the quilts were taken to the Tiny House village.

As I said I have now topped up the supply at Social Bite Village for the time being, but I will need more quilts soon.  I have three more being quilted by Kelly (who is amazing!) and I’m planning another quilt drive sew-in day at the shop to put together more orphan block quilts (sometime in July probably). There are also quite a few quilts trickling back to me made from all the cat and dog blocks that were last year’s Stitch Gathering tickets, some of these will also go to Siblings Together (depending which are suitable for which charity).

Plus I did have a few quilts promised to me last year that haven’t got to me yet.  I got a bit engulfed at the start of the quilt drive last year. I ran out of storage space and asked a few folks to hold off till this year. So if you do have a quilt for me then I can accept it now, please just let me know!

Would you like to donate a quilt? Please let me know by emailing [email protected].  As the beds are all single, the quilts required don’t need to be too big. 130cm x 180cm is about right though a little more or less in either direction wouldn’t be a huge problem.  If they could come to me already washed that would also be very helpful.

Thanks so much to all the past and future quilt drive donors!