I have been incredibly upset over the last few weeks watching the unbelievable situation in East Africa. It’s beyond words that people in our world, right now, in this day and age are starving. To death. It’s horrific, heart-breaking and I get so upset by it that Andy has, at times, asked me to stop watching the news. The stories and images are the stuff of nightmares. As a compassionate, empathetic person who is also a fiercely protective mother and wife, sister and daughter, I cannot fathom the thought of watching my family dying slowly around me, from lack of food. There are simply no words for the despair these people must be feeling.
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I can do. We regularly donate to various charities, yet our contribution will never be enough to make me feel like I have contributed all that I can. Besides, the reality is, financially we can only contribute so much. I keep reading and hearing the phrase ‘charity fatigue’ which I do understand. There are so many bad, bad things happening around us all the time that we often feel helpless and overwhelmed and tune out the bad stuff altogether. Also money is tighter than ever for so many people too and unfortunately usually when tragic things happen on a large scale, effecting whole countries, all that is needed is money and lots of it. (Interesting fact though, if everyone in Australia donated 10c, we could raise 2 million dollars?!)

As you all know I sew. I love to sew and whilst I have made things for my friends and family, I have made very little for myself. Which is why when Andy gave me a bag of beautiful vintage Australian tea-towels I thought I’d make us a lovely quilt. This was almost a year ago now and it is a project that I have turned to on and off over the year, when I have spare time (snort). It was never intended to be done in a hurry. It was always a happy side project and a real labor of love. When I look at it I see the Australia I feel so lucky to have grown up in which is why when I finally finished it at the weekend it seemed like a complete no brainer and totally  like the right thing to do.

I’m using my craft super powers for good and raffling off this quilt! It’s up for grabs!
All you have to do is follow these 2 steps:
Donate HERE at Unicef or maybe there is another charity you’d prefer…
Come back and in the comments section let me know that you have donated (perhaps copy and paste in your receipt number? Or just tell me, I’ll believe you. Surely this is not something you could lie about?!) You absolutely don’t need to tell me now much you donated though. It all counts!
I will then put all your names in a hat and draw out a winner (on the evening of Wednesday 31st August) and the winner then gets a THE QUILT! But there will really be no losers because you all would have donated and helped to try and end the famine in East Africa and that makes you a winner in my books. Hooray for you!
Before you start donating, a few quilt facts…the front is obvious vintage tea towels, all linen, the back fabric is cotton and also vintage. I machine quilted it horizontally and not all the lines are evenly spaced but that just makes it lovelier in my opinion! I used all natural bamboo batting and it measures approx 140cm x 115cm. Okay. As you were….