Our Very First Charity Quiltathon & Quilt Show

Yesterday, Thursday 30th January we held our very first Charity Quilt Show.

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.

Thurday arrived all too soon. A superb team of helpers arrived around 9am to finish off the stall set up and help with the staffing. Thank you so much - Jennie Walker, Carole Jones, Barbara Hall, Charlotte Cogbill, Julie Hatton, Mary Woolley, Joan Smith, Syliva Britton & Janet Dove.

The Mayor and Mayoress, Cllr Terry Dixon & Mrs Sheena Dixon attended the event along with many media photographers.

My mum enjoyed staffing the entrance desk and we had over 135 people through the doors. We charged £3 entrance and this included free tea/coffee.

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.

Charity Quiltathon & Quilt Show

The Quilt Show and Coffee Morning is now scheduled for Thursday January 30th.  11-2pm. Admission is just £3 and includes tea/coffee. Please come along and help support this event.

So since the new year it has been all go.  I am still quilting tops for the Charity Quiltathon.

Here are a few more -

This is a top I made years ago and it has sat on my UFO piles since then. I kept adding borders and it got too big to try and quilt on the Janome.

I choice 'circles of life' for this one.

This lovely bright top was donated

The pattern we chose for this one is called 'Happy Fish'

Another donated top

pattern is called 'ribbit'

This top was donated. It was a block a month quilt

We chose a traditional feather pattern called Tufts and Twirls  by Sharon Schamber

This is another top I made some time ago from a jelly roll

I chose a grape vine pattern for this

Here are a couple of scrap quilts

The pattern is Jigsaw

The pattern for this one is Summer Time. It has butterflies, bees, dragon flies and daisies, but the camera does not show it well.

The quilt pattern on both these ones is 'Pin Wheel Meander'

Charity Quiltathon - More donations

OOOh look what has arrived today

Thank you so much to Georgina Matthias at Habico Ltd, in Leeds for this very generous donation to our Charity Quiltathon.

Thanks again to Barbara & John at The Sewing Centre in Bridlington for all your support and help. I'm sure the event is going to be fantastic and that we will make some great items which will raise lots of funds for our charities.

One of our regular sewing ladies popped by yesterday too with three big bags of things - some finished, some UFOs and a huge bag of material. Thank you so much for your generosity Sylvia.

I have also received a double size quilt top from a lady in Stevenage. She started it several years ago and has never got round to finishing it off. Thank you Julie, I'm sure we can get that finished and it will help raise some much needed funds for one of the charities.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an email from a lady who I have never met or spoken to. She had come accross this blog and wanted to help. She posted me a beautiful quilt, all finished with dogs on and wants us to donate it to The Dogs Trust on her behalf.

I really cannot believe the generosity of so many individual quilters and suppliers.
thank you very much, but please keep them coming!

We need UFO's, spare Orphan blocks left over from other project, fabric scraps, material, even fleece for backing, jelly strips, embroideries, really anything which we can use to make desirable items for our charities.

The Charities we are going to be supporting are -
Yorkshire Cancer Research
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
The Dogs Trust
Bridlington RNLI
Project Linus - a volunteer organisation who donates quilts/blankets to terminally ill, mainly children but also those in need.

We shall also be holding a charity coffee morning/afternoon on Thursday 30th January so we can show off what we make before donating.

Charity Quiltathon

I have some fantastic news.......................

As I have mentioned before, we are holding a Charity Quiltathon here in January and our volunteer quilters are going to be making quilts etc to help five different charities - Yorkshire Cancer Research, Yorkshire Air Ambulance, The Dogs Trust, Bridlington RNLI and Project Linus.

Look what has arrived for our Charity Quiltathon

Not one, but two whole rolls of wadding which has been very kindly donated by

John (and Barbara) Hall from Bridlington, Sewing Centre.  

Thank you both so much, it very kind of you to support our event so generously.

Bridlington Sewing Centre is located

1 Queen St Bridlington, North Humberside YO15 2SF
Telephone  01262 603057

John is a whizz with machines, so if you need your machine serviced you can book it in for a service whilst you are here, or even buy a new Janome!

They also have a selection of material, jelly rolls & most other bits and bats sewers require and all at a reasonable price and with great friendly and efficient service too. 

Charity Event - Quilters Needed

We shall be holding our very first 'Charity Quiltathon' in January.

The aim is to provide five charities with quilts, cushions or what ever to help them raise money.

The chosen charities are -

Yorkshire Cancer Research
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
Bridlington Life Boat
Dogs Trust
& Project Linus

We are asking for donations of fabric, orphan blocks, embroideries, jelly strips, scraps, UFO's etc from individuals and companies.  If you have anything to donate either bring it along to us here at The Royal Bridlington, or you can post it to us at

The Royal Bridlington
Shaftesbury Road
Bridlington
East Yorkshire
YO15 3NP

Tel 01262 672433    email - fiona@royalhotelbrid.co.uk

We also need quilters to come along and sew, sew, sew. The dates are 14th & 15th January 2014.

In return we will provide refreshments and lunch.  For those who want to stay over, we are offering a very very special rate for B & B of just £20.
So if you can help, please reserve your place.

If we mange to make enough items then we may well hold a charity coffee morning after the event and display the quilts before we donate them to the charities.

I have been raising funds for a roll of wadding by making Jams & Chutneys all year.