Saturday, February 25, 2012

What a day

Greetings! 
And Happy Saturday! 
hope you've had as wonderful of a day as I have!

Today I visited a Project Linus Blanket Bee
organized by my friend Eve Buck who is a Phoenix area
coordinator for the Project Linus organization.



Eve and I used to work together at Sunburst Elementary School
many years ago and recently met up again at a quilt store during a shop hop.
We exchanged cards and went our merry ways.


Last spring my friend Kathy and I put in motion a dream that we both had.....the desire to give back.  And to give back doing what we love and using the talents we possess.  The HeartString Quilts Charity Sew-In was born.  You can read about our very first sew-in Here.

We've had several very productive sew-in's since that first one and have made quite a few quilts.  The Sew days are so wonderful because first of all quilters love to get together, Love to piece and quilt and love to share the knowledge they have about quilting with other quilters. 

Today Kathy and I took 6 six of our little quilts to the Blanket Bee.
Here they are sitting on the table ready to be processed.  The donated quilts are checked over to see if they are acceptable, (clean, no animal hair, well put together, happy colors) a label is sewn on, the quilt is "wanded" to see if there are any stray pins left in, then packaged up in bags to be donated to various hospitals, shelters, police and fire stations around the west valley.  All quilts are given to children.  We learned that around 400 quilts are given out each month. 


We arrived about 2 hours after the bee had begun so many of the ladies had already left, but we were amazed by all of the work stations.  There was a station for cutting fleece so it could be passed on to ladies who were adding a crochet border.  There were ladies sewing labels, ladies crocheting, ladies processing and bagging.  Amazing.
And drum roll please:

414 blankets were donated today!
Amazing!


Here's Eve in one of the little store rooms
pictured with blankets all bagged up and ready to be distributed.
Pretty awesome.

Makes me happy to know that our quilts will be put to good use
and hopefully cheer up a sick child. 
Wrap them in love.

On another note I got to spend a bit of quality time with
my best girl.
We are planting strawberries and hopefully they will grow
and we'll have a fun experience together.

And then we will EAT the strawberries!
Say a little prayer for me.....
I have a notorious brown thumb.
It ~might~ have something to do with the fact that sometimes I
forget to water things...........And we live in the desert......

God Bless,
tammy