I’ve been talking about starting and keeping a blog up to date for more years than I care to admit to! So, here goes – the first blog for my shiny new website. Again, I started this a year ago and it sat waiting for me to find time to build it. I hope you like it! Is it me or does time move too fast?

Anyway, back to the reason why I’m starting with this particular blog. Those that know me or have followed my Sewing with Kerrie and Living in Loveliness businesses for the past five years will know that community and charity projects play a very big part in my business plan.

I believe if you can help then you should. Sewing is such a fabulous skill to have for so many reasons but today I’m going to share with you a very special reason. In 2018, we as a team of sewers agreed to make and gift 100 quilts for local charity and hospitals. We finished 2018 having gifted 170, absolutely smashing the target I set in January 2018. You can imagine how much pleasure this brought to the many people who got involved. We were lucky enough to know some of the children who received the quilts and were sent messages of thanks and beautiful photos.

This brings me to our next charity sewing event. 11-year-old Amelia has been attending my children’s sewing classes for two years and inspired her mum, Emma, to start sewing too. Last year, Emma and Amelia got involved with making the charity quilts. This inspired Amelia to recommend a new charity, one which I personally hadn’t heard of.

ProjectGive provide free sanitary items to schools and community spaces. The mission is to end period poverty. When I was told about this, it made me super sad to think that something so essential isn’t always available, or that girls can’t afford them. Emma found this super cute pattern to make cute pouches to add sanitary towels ready for distributing.

This brings me onto what I need from volunteers to make this possible! There are lots of ways you could get involved. Firstly, by buying a pack of sanitary towels ready for the pouches. In some shops they are as little as 89pence for 16. That means we can make 8 pouches for less than a £1.

We already have the fabric from last year’s fundraising. So secondly, I need volunteers to cut the fabric, press the fabrics, sew the fabrics, pack the pouches and finally we’d never say no to yummy cake donations (for us to eat while we sew) – well, maybe not me! I stupidly gave it up for 100 days. I know – I must be mad, especially when I run tea parties, but the lovely volunteers will enjoy and appreciate it. Finally, we will need tea makers on the day!

If you are unable to join us on the day, you can still get involved by making these and dropping them in to me or posting. If this is something you would like to do please contact me directly.

So… find the tutorial here 

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