Giving Something Back

I've been mulling lately about where this quilting is going, if it's going anywhere at all.  Do I want to try to make money from quilting?  Do I just want to sit back and enjoy it?  Do I want to sell quilts?  Try to write a book?  Sell quilt patterns?  And in the midst of all those thoughts, something happened at the weekend which made me stop and think - come on Lynne, it's not all about you.  I was visiting my sister in London for the weekend and we were chatting with a friend of hers and sooner or later the subject of my quilting came up.

She told me about a charity she helps in the UK called Siblings Together which is an initiative dedicated towards promoting positive contact between siblings separated by care. The trauma of separation from siblings and the lifelong impact this can have is too often overlooked. 'Siblings Together' aims to provide opportunities for planned, enjoyable, high quality contact. This is achieved initially through holiday camps, with the additional aims of building foundations for continued contact and educating a generation of social workers about the importance of sibling family contact. 

 My sister's friend was telling us about camps they go on camps where she cooks for 40-50 children, all siblings separated by the care system. The siblings get time to play and just be together which is so important for their short and long term well being. She also told us that they would love to be able to give something to these kids - something to comfort them, keep them warm, take away from camp as a reminder of the time they've had with their siblings, something homemade, just for them, to keep. Children moved from pillar to post in the care system often won't have something special like that, homemade just for them, to bring them warmth and a little comfort and maybe a few happy memories.

Which got me to thinking, what can I do? Well I can donate a quilt or two of course. Would anyone out there be interested in donating a quilt or two (or maybe more)? Could we get 50 quilts by the summer?  That would be something, wouldn't it?  One quilt for every single one of those kids at the camp.  And why have I posted pictures of old projects of mine in this post?  Well I'm thinking of the quilts I've made which might make great kids quilts for this project.  Hexagon Park for a little girl.  Rough and Tumble for a teenager perhaps.  Do you have any quilts you've made which have just sat in a cupboard just waiting for a chance like this?  And if you get involved and feel like blogging it, maybe we can spread the word enough to get this done before those kids go off to their camps in the summer.

Would you join me?  Would you get involved?  I have created a Flickr group where we can see what we can come up with.  Please leave comments on this post letting me know if you would like to get involved in any way at all and hop on over to the Flickr group, join up and see what we can do.