The idea of a Charity Quiltahon started well over 12 months ago and over the last few months has become more than a full time, all consuming affair - lol!
We decided to support five charities - a diverse range so as to appeal to as many people as possible - Yorkshire Cancer Research, Yorkshire Air Ambulance, The Dogs Trust, Bridlington RNLI and Project Linus. For anyone who does not know - Project Linus is a voluntary organisation who provide a quilt/comfort blanket to terminally ill mainly children and those in need.
Quilters donated fabric, orphan blocks, UFO's etc to the cause. Many unquilted tops which have sat in many quilters UFO piles were donated and I started to get a head start by quilting these on my new ABM Innova Longarm quilting machine when we return from training in Utah.
Over 25 ladies took part in the quiltathon earlier this month. The Royal Bridlington provided free refreshments, homemade biscuits, cakes and lunch over the two days to these ladies in return for all their hard work. A heavily discounted accommodation rate was also offered to those wanting to stay over. Thank you for donating your time and expertise.
This resulted in many more quilt tops to be quilted and many other homemade items for the sale table and tombola.
The last week has been hectic to say the least. I finished off the last of the quilting - I ended up quilting over 45 of the quilts on the longarm and without this superb machine we would certainly not achieve anywhere as much as we have.
I would like to say a personal thank you to Barbara at The Sewing Centre in Bridlington who has popped in every few days since the begining of January to help and she has assisted with the attaching of bindings and sewing down of many of these quilts.
Then came the job of trying to price these gorgeous quilts. We decided on a two price method and Tim developed a simple spreadsheet to assist. The first price we estimated was the actual cost of the fabrics, wadding and backing, then the second was the value. We came up with the idea of categorising the quilt into simple, medium and complex and adding time/quilting/extra fabric for seams according to this. We felt this figure was imperrative for our charities as a non quilter would have no idea as to the 'value' of a quilt and we really wanted them to be put to good use and not under valued.
Next came the job of displaying all the items. Ummm...... we had 86 quilts, 3 bed runners and matching cushions, around 30 other cushions, 12 draught excluders, aprons, table mats, wall hangings, bags etc etc.
Over the next two days Tim and I installed a washing line affair around our walls and we began pegging out the quilts.
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in the kitchen creating items for the cake stall.
Our staff donated their time free of charge to the event and staffed the kitchen and served drinks and food. Thank you Martin, Rosheila, Suny, Marilyn & Sarah for all your hard work.
Cllr Shelagh Findlay, Deputy Mayor & Cllr Jacqueline Foster drew the many raffle tickets for our many prizes.
We raised £1600 and this was split between Yorkshire Cancer Reseach, Yorkshire Air Ambulance, The Dogs Trust and Bridlington RNLI, so they each will recieve £400 plus some of the unsold quilts to raise more funds.
Project linus will recieve 52 of the quilts.
Please may we also thank the following people who supported the event -
Bridlington Sewing Centre
Scarborough Sewing Centre
Janome
Habico
Boyes
Philip Anthony Photographers, Tickton
Lloyd Dowson
Richardsons Greengrocers
Fairfax Meadow Butchers
The Shed, Beverley
Bridlington Belvedere Golf Club
The Spa, Bridlington
Wold Top Brewery
Yorkshire Coast Radio
Bridlington Free Press
Hull Daily Mail
Many quilters from far & wide
All the twitteres who repeated our tweets
and Everyone who came to the event -
THANK YOU SO MUCH
On my next blog there are pictures of each of the quilts for the mad quilters out there that didn't manage to attend.
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