Another quilt for Siblings Together

Welcome to all of you especially if you are visiting from Bloggers Quilt Festival, I’m delighted to have a new quilt to show you:

Last month I showed you a new quilt for Siblings Together made with Parson Gray fabrics leftovers from a quilt I made a couple of years ago and with donations of Parson Gray fabrics from lovely ladies in the UK quilting community.

A couple of years ago I made a Modern Plus Quilt for Siblings Together and ever since I’ve wanted to make another.  With the leftovers from the other quilts I worked out that I didn’t have quite enough fabric to make a decent sized top but I did have quite a bit of Trade Blanket in Oyster that I could use as a background fabric so that maybe the pluses would appear to be floating.

I really needed to make the best use of the fabrics I had left so after measuring each piece I worked out that 4.5″ squares were going to be the optimum size along with 12.5′ x 4.5″ rectangles.  You probably know that using a rectangle instead of 3 squares reduces the sewing time and saves an inch of fabric (1/2″ in each seam) and when fabric is tight 1″ is precious!

A number of the prints are directional so when laying out the floor I worked hard to make sure that these were all correct. This is an IG photo I used for layout:

I was checking for mistakes too and nobody spotted this one:

Can you see it on the right hand side?  I sadly didn’t spot it until I’d sewn the top together but fortunately as it was on the side it wasn’t too tricky to unpick and fix!

You might notice the green (officially Empire Mark Forest) fabric, it was the only bit of green I had left but I thought it a shame not to use it and it might just pop out and be a bit of a statement in the middle.  I think it has actually blended in a bit now that it’s been quilted and washed – or maybe not:

There’s a bit of green in the scrappy binding too so that green plus is not completely alone.

I quilted this either side of every seam line (including the imaginary ones due to using rectangles rather than squares!) using Aurifil 2310 50wt.

For the backing I used yardage of Bike Path from Lucky Penny by Alison Glass that I bought last year for the purpose of Siblings Together quilt backs, to add to the width I used more of the Trade Blanket in oyster and Cocoons in bone:

This is no. 54 (this year) of the finished quilts for Siblings Together, there are now 70 quilts (contributed to by quilters worldwide) ready to go to children this summer who have been separated by the care system, if you want to know more about the charity then I highly recommend reading this post by Lynne  which has a tear jerking story from the lady who set it up.  The work they do is vital and I love that despite my lack of skills in the area they work in I can contribute something to improve the lives of the children they aim to help.  You can see all 70 finished quilts here.

If you want to contribute/help/support I’d love to hear from you, this is an ongoing project so it’s never too late to volunteer.

Quilt stats:
Pattern: Inspired by Jeni Baker’s Modern Plus Quilt tutorial
Fabrics: Curious Nature and Seven Wonders by Parson Gray
Wadding – Super-Soft 70/30 Eco-Blend by Sew Simple
Quilting – Straight lines by me on my Janome Horizon
Size – 60″ x 68″

This is another tick on my 2nd quarter FAL list I’ll be linking it up at the end of June.