Jo Avery – the Blog

Social Bite Village Quilt Drive Update 2020 Part 2

Back in June I shared my latest batch of 6 donated Social Bite Village quilts in this post. At the same time I put out a call for some more quilts and you lovely generous quilters answered!

Two weeks ago I dropped off 16 quilts!  Thank you so much to all the wonderful donors.

Now it’s time for their quilts to take the spotlight and for the makers to take a bow!

Muriel Campbell made 4 quilts for the drive! Woohoo, thanks so much Muriel!

First of all the top sampler quilt and it’s twin below which are made with such bright happy rainbow fabric, which are sure to cheer any space. Next this wonderful ‘hot’ Kaffe Fassett stripey quilt, abover right.

And lastly another gorgeous bright rainbow quilt, but this one is so perfectly reversible that we couldn’t decide which was the right side, they are both fab!

Thank you to Muriel for these amazing quilts, what a stellar effort!

Next we have another twin quilt donation, this one from my very own sister Jane!

Jane used all sorts of scraps to make these two striking quilts, including left overs from a Feathers Quilt she made after attending my workshop.

She quilted them with a mixture of straight line quilting across the squares and either FMQ of hand quilting in the border, as you can see below on the left.

Lovely Margaret Beggs is one of the East Kilbride Quirky Quilters (as is Muriel!) and I think as a group they have contributed more quilts to the Social Bite Village than any other.  Huge thanks Quirky Ladies!

Margaret’s latest offering was made in Jelly Roll race and is such a fun design!

Back in early March I taught a workshop for the Dulwich Quilters in South London. This turned out to be the last travelling teaching I did for a long time, little did we know what was coming along the road towards us all!

I was hosted by a quilter called Jenny Strong who I had been conversing with via email but had never met. It turned out Jenny was originally from Scotland (her family hail from my local town Linlithgow!) and as I am originally from London neither of us had the accent that the other was expecting!

I had a lovely stay with Jenny and her husband and enjoyed getting to see a bit of beautiful Dulwich Village and of course teaching another enthusiastic bunch of quilters to make my Shutter Speed quilt.  I told Jenny about the Social Bite Village Quilt Drive and with her links to Scotland she was keen to make a quilt. This beautiful scrappy quilt arrived in the summer and I was amazed to find it was completely hand quilted by Jenny! I just love how she has used different sized and interlocking circles for a quilt pattern. Thanks so much Jenny!

This next quilt has such a great collaborative story behind it. Last year I hosted a launch party for Sarah Ashford’s amazing new Dashwood Studio fabric line, ‘Great British Quilter Back to Basics’, as part of the 2019 Stitch Gathering weekend (this all seems like a lifetime ago now!). We held a little soiree at myBearpaw store for all the Stitch Gathering attendees and Dashwood kindly sent us preview fabric for the goody bags and a couple of prizes. 

We gave away one FQ bundle of all 20 designs as a raffle prize and it was won by one of my loyal students Paula Collings. Paula was quite overwhelmed by this win!  She decided to use the bundle to make a quilt for SBVQD and to use one of my patterns for it.  And so this gorgeous version of my Bear Paw Parade pattern from Today’s Quilter is the result!! And she used up more of the fabric to produce an equally stunning back! I think this might be my favourite SBVQD quilt yet! And the second would be the other side of this quilt – I still can’t decided which one I prefer!

Paula also donated this beautiful blue and white Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt!  Thank you so much Paula!

All the quilts are washed prior to delivery (unless I have been told specifically by the donor that this has been done by them) and each one is labelled. A huge thanks to my sister Jane who sews these labels on when she comes to visit me.

My hubby Jonathan snapped this great photo of some of the quilts drying in the sun – don’t they look cheerful?!

Since taking the 16 quilts I’ve already received one new quilt and so the start of the next pile has begun. I am always looking for quilt donations so if you think you can help then please read this introduction blog post to begin with. This will tell you the size and type of quilts we are looking for and also explain what the whole Social Bite Village Quilt Drive is all about. You can also search ‘social bite’ in the search bar to see other posts about donated quilts over the last 3 years. I think I have delivered over 55 quilts now!

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.

2 comments

  1. At Project Linus we make quilts for sick, disabled, traumatised and disadvantaged children. Sometimes the quilts we receive aren’t wholly suitable for children but would be suitable for adults.

    Could you contact me to discuss us sharing such quilts with you for the Social Bite Project.

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