Quilts for Japan

No pithy title today - just a serious update on our last Crafting for Charity event.

These are on their way to Japan

As you may know from our previous posts, the company that Cassandra and I work for generously gives each employee a half day a quarter to do charity/volunteer work. It can be anything from Habitat for Humanity to volunteering at your kid's school. So, we formed a Crafting for Charity group that takes over the work room in our local sewing/knitting shop and spend a half day making stuff to give away.

We've made sundresses for an orphanage, no-sew fleece blankets for an animal shelter, scarves for the homeless, and knitted hats for preemie babies. At our event in February, three of us decided to take on a pattern called the Take-Along Quilt from the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims. None of us had quilted before so assume what you will... Needless to say, we weren't able to finish the entire quilt in one four-hour period so the remaining work was waiting for us last Friday when we took our next charity day.

A week before our charity day, someone sent me a link to a blog post by the editor of Quilters Newsletter. The exact post was as follows:

Quilters Newsletter has long enjoyed a friendship with Patchwork Tsushin, a leading Japanese quilt magazine. So when Editor in Chief Naomi Ichikawa emailed to say her magazine is collecting comfort quilts for those impacted by the recent earthquake in Japan, we wanted to join the effort. QN will gather quilts from U.S. quiltmakers then forward them to Naomi and her staff, who will deliver them to those in need.

This is when I start believing in fate or divine intervention or something. How perfect is it that, just as we're about to finish three quilts, we learn about a way to give to relief efforts in Japan? The idea that our small gift might bring comfort to someone who has been devastated by the events there is really moving.

I love how they look rolled up!

 So, we hurried to finish all three which I'm proud to say we accomplished. They were boxed up and mailed out two days ago with instructions to have them delivered to Quilters Newsletter today. Sadly, they got hung up in Colorado because of inclement weather but they're rescheduled to be delivered on Monday and then our first-time, rather amateurish attempts will be sent with the more serious quilts to warm someone during this crises. When something like this happens, it really solidified why we do this charity work.

I hope that whoever ends up with my little quilt doesn't look too closely at the stitching.

- Alex

Giving Is Fun!

A couple Friday's ago Alex told you that we were on our way to our latest charity crafting afternoon. It was a wonderful (and productive) time and I finally have some images to share with you from our day.

Three of us worked on the Take-Along Quilt from the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims. This project is really fun to sew, but unfortunately the 4-hour window of time that we had to work on this project was not enough to complete our quilts. Being the "business people" that we are, we did try to proactively set some "efficiencies" in place to try to shave some time off the process. We centralized the cutting of the panels and the backing by having a non-sewer work the rotary cutter table and had another non-sewer pressing seams and smoothing wrinkles in fabric. While this did save us some time, sadly, not enough. I think that we are all about 3/4 of the way done with the quilts and when we reunite in April for another afternoon, we will all finish and maybe even be able to spend some time on a small project with the rest of the time.

We centralized cutting operations for a 19.45% increase in efficiency.

Seaming my Dr. Seuss quilt.

Erin figuring out her design.

Alex lining up her layers.

We had a no-sew fleece blanket project and the seaming of a patchwork knitted afghan going on at this table. We have also decided that we would love to line the back of the finished afghan with some flannel for extra warmth. Maybe we can squeeze that in next time too.

Then we had the knitting contingency. Baby hats for newborns and scarves for the homeless were the projects for the day over here. We heard a lot of laughter (and a few tears) from this table, I might have to join this group one of our next afternoons!

Love the knitters!

 Great times, great projects, and great people. I love our charity crafting group!

–Cassandra