This might be my favourite Siblings Together quilt I’ve made yet. Mindyou I always say that! Many of you will know that Siblings Together is a charity that brings together siblings separated in the UK care system. The many events they run include camps and the highlight is being gifted a quilt, often the first handmade item the children have ever received.

We have been having a recruitment drive and there are now 4 Bees up and running full of keen and generous quilters who make blocks and some of whom then take them and make them into quilts. We need a 100 quilts a year…This beauty is the work of Bee 2 although many of the new volunteers who went on to form the new Bee 4 also made blocks. Altogether I reckon there are over 20 contributors to this quilt. There was even a block making ‘factory’ down at Hever quilt show where Heather Hasthorpe and Jackie Norris were manning the Modern Quilt Group section of the Quilters Guild and brought with them a vintage sewing machine and were sewing blocks. Always a good ruse I think to draw people in  because who can resist seeing what someone else is making!

I had seen the Lake Cabin Quilt pattern on Rachel’s Stitched in Color blog in the Summer and thought it would make a good charity quilt using up blue and green strings.  With Rachel’s kind permission I shared the quarter log cabin design with Bee members but of course the tricky  bit with this pattern is the sashing and the fact it is set on point. But of course that’s what makes it different and attractive. I hadn’t  quite appreciated how much extra work there would be taking into account those two features but it was well worth it.

I went with a dark greeny blue solid having done an IG vote. Democracy ruled that a blue background was required but the initial choice was I agree a bit loud. So I toned it down from the girl guide blue of the bottom of the picture to Mineral, a Free Spirit solid, which is this lovely greeny blue.

When I’m sewing something big I tend to do that in the kitchen and when I’m sewing at the weekend the children moan slightly less than if I’m tucked away in the sewing room. I couldn’t work out why every time I returned to the sewing machine my thread had become unthreaded. Dreadful mother that I am I began to suspect the children of playing a joke until I caught the culprit red handed! Felix loves playing with a full spool as he can flick it up and chase after it so a proffered empty spool was ignored.

Skye played her part in delaying progress by curling up and going to sleep on the quilt mid quilting. Any cat lovers out there, I’m ashamed to say she was pushed off and offered another quilt but that wasn’t good enough! She hopped straight back on…

There will be more quarter log cabins in my future as I had a bumper crop sent by Bee members. I pulled out all the plain masculine blocks and will make up another quilt for an older teen. The rest went on the back.

Linking up with aLorna of Sew Fresh Quilts, Kelly My Quilt Infatuation and Amanda Jean Crazy Mom Quilts

This is a Q4 FAL finish as per my targets