do. Good Stitches bee blocks
Since moving to The Netherlands, I joined a European group of quilters who sew quilts for charity. It’s the Comfort circle of do. Good Stitches, which is a charity quilting movement I founded in 2010. Do Good Stitches rose up during a time when blogging was the top way for quilters to connect and Flickr was our photo platform of choice. The online landscape has certainly changed, but do. Good Stitches still has circles all over the world, many of which use Instagram now to connect. Each group of quilters collectively makes 8 or so quilts per year to donate to children’s charities, women’s shelters, terminally ill patients and more.
In September Comfort circle members were tasked with sewing Urban Chicken quilt blocks, a free tutorial available at Wombat Quilts. One thing I appreciate about being a part of a bee is the way it keeps me working with my fabric scraps. When the task is to sew just a handful of quilt blocks, scraps will usually do the job. These blocks used scraps from Aria’s recent Ikat quilt and some purple fabrics from quilts long past.
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October’s bee block-of-choice was also scrap-based. Sewing with scraps is the messiest, don’t you think? My scraps are organized by color and size, but to build this set of blocks I wanted scraps from two different color categories and in three different sizes. It was too much to tame!
The finished blocks are 9.5” unfinished. These are a type of log cabin block that are built with full frames of fabric. We were given lots of liberty to interrupt those frames as desired so as to use as many scraps as we would like. That was a fun, open-ended assignment!
All of my bee blocks have already arrived by mail to the lead quilter of the month, whose job it is to plan the quilt, assemble blocks and finish the quilt. Now Comfort circle will break for the holidays and resume in January. And guess who leads the quilt in January? That’s me! I already have an idea in mind!
p.s. Should you like to join do. Good Stitches, you can read more about how it works and sign up here. You will be added to a wait list, and I will contact you when a space opens up in an existing circle. There are often lots of member changes at the beginning of the year, so it would be great to have some more volunteers on the list! Do you live in Europe? If we have 3 more quilter volunteers we’ll be able to start a new European circle, so don’t be shy.
