A Quilt for Ukraine

Take someone with a big heart and remarkable organisational skills, add a group of willing quilters, and the result is a lovely blue and yellow quilt that is being raffled to raise funds towards helping the plight of the people of Ukraine.

The quilt for Ukraine after the top had been pieced. It measures 85 x 61 inches (about 220 x 155 cm)

It was my good quilting friend, often mentioned in this blog, who had the bright idea of a communal fund-raising quilt. She was inspired to do this when an artist she knows invited her to take a ticket for a painting he was raffling through the JustGiving site. The initiative raised 10000 GBP for the Ukraine disaster fund.

So, at the next QUOGS (Quilters of Grahamstown) meeting, K asked everyone in the group to make at least one 12 and a half inch square and bring it to the next meeting. The brief was to use the Ukraine colours of blue and yellow and to make either a sunflower or a star. Within two weeks there were nearly enough blocks for a single bed sized quilt. The call for a few more blocks was quickly and generously heeded, and by the next week we were ready to stitch together the quilt top.

The QUOGS is a group of wonderful women who have been meeting and convivially stitching for more than two decades.

Three of the young QUOGS (😂🤣) gathered to stitch the blocks together. Here’s a picture story of that process.

The quilt is now with professional long-arm quilter Sue Bax and, once it is quilted, it will be bound in navy blue. It is a bright and handsome quilt, made with love, to keep the lucky winner warm.

To take a raffle ticket is a simple on-line process, and can be done from anywhere in the world.

Click on this link and follow the prompts. Please be sure to add your name and email at the end so that your ticket can be entered in the draw.

Any generous South Africans reading this and wishing to contribute, please don’t be put off when you see that there is not a Rand option. You can buy a ticket by selecting any currency, and your bank will convert it into Rands when debiting your account. You can also reduce the amounts given in the drop down menu. For a $10 ticket it cost R173. This included a 15% admin cost, which is probably optional.

Before and after being stitched, using only a few of the tantalising embroidery stitch options on my no-longer-quite-so-new Bernina sewing machine.