As we celebrate 40 years of The Quilters’ Guild we’d like to invite you all to participate in a fun way to join in with the Guild’s birthday whilst supporting the Guild.

How about sharing this great mini project? Perhaps consider organising an event where you could sew together with friends to celebrate our birthday?

Guild member Sarah Ashford (@sarahashfordstudio) has designed for us a super manageable sized fun Birthday Block based on our party hat. We’d love to invite you to make one and send it to us to be part of a colourful, joyful celebration of the love of patchwork and quilting that lies at the heart of The Quilters’ Guild.

At The Festival of Quilts this summer we want to be able to show off the fabulous, colourful, creative sewing of our members. Not everyone wants to enter quilts to the big shows, or make huge quilts but this is a fun way for everyone to show off their work with The Guild!

We’ll do our best to display as many hats as we can at the Festival of Quilts and the blocks will be used to raise further funds for the Guild.

This block pattern will be available from 1^st March to buy at QShop, both the paper and digital version will be available for £3.50 (+P&P for the paper version) with all profits passing to The Guild. The digital pattern will be emailed to you as a PDF file.

The block is a foundation paper pieced (FPP) pattern and contains full, illustrated instructions and tips for how to do FPP so it’s a nice project for beginners or anyone who would like to try a new skill too.

Choose your favourite bright party colours, feel free to personalise and embellish your party hat, embroider your name or initials, add a pom pom or trim – it’s up to you!

Full instructions about how to finish your block and where to send it by the end of June 2019 to be included in our display at The Guild Stand this summer are included in the pattern. Please note if you decide to send it for display, we cannot return blocks but they will be used in another fundraising capacity for The Guild later in the year.

Please share this fun initiative with your friends and encourage them to take part. We’d love to involve as many people as possible to help celebrate the 40 years of success of the Guild through the creativity and skill of quilters today.

We’d love to see your Birthday Blocks, so please share them with us on social media using the hashtags #birthdayblock and #QGat40