June 2021 Work Day Recap

It was a great weekend to be quilting.  The group's founder, Linda Hungerford, visited us on Saturday.  It was fun to share how the ministry has grown.  While the number of quilters and the closet space has grown, our Mission and Vision remain the same:

Hope Quilters mission is to serve God in the world by making quilts that give warmth, comfort and support for those in need.

Our vision is to grow and learn in fellowship and fun while designing and creating quilts for others, at home and in the world.

Many of us feel that it has been a blessing to find something we are passionate about and love to do and then God finds this way to use it in His plan.   As we open our hearts, may we continue to see His blessings as we fulfill this mission.

Speaking about God's plan...his plan this month had us donating 17 quilts to the two bible camp quilt auctions.  These will be held on August 7th at both Riverside and Okoboji Bible Camps. You can check out the details of the camp as well as the quilt auctions on their websites.

https://www.okoboji.org/

https://www.riversidelbc.org/

In addition, we had 21 quilts ready to go to our mission partners.  You'll want to check out the blog to see pictures of the auction quilts as well as the mission quilts.  Show and Tell is always so much fun and inspiring.  Two of the items are wheelchair blankets.  This was a great use of some smaller tops and batting pieces.  We're working on where these can be used as church ministry personnel are just now starting to get back into reaching out personally with some shut-ins.  What a wareonderful delight these can be to those who have been shut off for much of this pandemic.  Let's pray they bring a ray of sunshine to those who receive them.

Finally, as you know we've been blessed with some very generous donations over the past 12 to 18 months.  Our usual outlets for non-quilting fabrics have also had adjustments due to the pandemic.  So we are looking at alternative ways to put these fabrics to good use.   We also have donations of lots of quilting fabrics as well. It just seems like we are short on time together and space to work.  I have been looking at some options for addressing both of these needs.  Here are a few things in the works.  

We'll be exploring ideas to donate or use up the excess we have.  Currently, there are six apple boxes of fabric stored at a member's home and our shelves at Hope are also overflowing.   It seems that our biggest challenge is just time and people resources.  There is just not enough time to do all the work one weekend a month.  And frankly, some of it isn't really fun to do by yourself.  Sewing together helps make a tedious task more fun and helps get the creative juices flowing.  So here are some efforts we will be initiating as well as opportunities we are looking into:

1. Upcoming Work Days:  Going to try to focus the next upcoming HQ workdays for special projects.  We have an abundance of focused bins, like precuts, but we don't have people focusing on this type of work.  If we can just focus on doing some work to consolidate these bins we'll have room for organizing the odds and ends.   Two that make sense are using the precuts and putting together some batiks quilts.  Look for more details in the coming months.  
2. Small-Group Idea: Tote bags:  
   We can make simple tote bags from a yard of fabric and some binding scraps.  Tote bags are used for carrying items from pantries.  The Mission teams are asking for these to take to the homeless shelters.  Grab some friends and I'll get you directions!
3. Dress a Girl Around the World :  We've been in contact with the director of this group.  They are able to take yardage of fabric to make dresses.  We will be sorting through our stash to find fabrics that will make pretty dresses.  HQ won't be sewing dresses, just donating fabric.  However, if this is something that sounds like fun you can check out the link provided.  We do have a local DM group doing this.  Maybe you can join them.
4. We are checking with our Mission partners to see if they have a need for any of the fabric.  We've looked into sewing programs in the past but this could be used for crafting and other activities too.  It's just time to start looking for creative ways to use the fabric we can't quilt with.

Another suggestion is we get together with friends to do some sewing!  We've learned that sewing with friends can sometimes make less desirable projects much more fun.  A couple ideas for that is to open your home and invite friends over, or check with your local Hope Campus to see if they have rooms/tables/time availability.  We can always discuss this more at our next meeting. 

As always, check out the PHOTOS page and the extra QUILT AUCTIONS page to see all the lovely quilts turned in.  Summer is going by quickly so enjoy it while you can and we'll see you at the next meeting!