BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Quilting Quilting for Charity

Lots of us have excess fabrics in our stashes that we're never going to use. In my latest article I discuss what I do with with my stash that I'll never use up in my lifetime.

What do you do with your excess stash fabrics. What about your excess time? Do you make items for charity? I'd love to hear what you are up to in your neck of the world. Let us know.

We have a group of 8-10 quilters that make child size quilts to donate to Victim Services at the RCMP here in our small town. These quilts are then given to traumatized children who have been taken from an abusive home situation, who have been in a vehicle accident, who have been taken to a safe house or who have been traumatized in some other way. We started this project in Feb. of this year and have made over 90 quilts. We now have money donated to our group to purchase the fabric but when we started, each member used their own fabric. Sometimes the group fabric does not have the right color or size so a quilter will still donate some of her own stash. Doing this gives each of us a really good feeling of giving back to our community. I am proud to say the suggestion for this project came from my hubby.

Racing Red Granny

What you are doing is wonderful. I do have some fabric that I could donate. Is there a place I could send it?

I belong to an international on-line group of machine embroiderers and quilters. We do embroidered quilts for charities. Each month we choose a theme for the quilts. Some members embroider blocks using designs from the theme, others put together filler blocks to go between the embroidered ones. We mail our blocks to the 2 people who organize them. They then send them out to people who will put the tops together and/or finish off the quilts.
Most of the quilts go to children in distress, the Linus project, and women's shelters, but in July we made 60 quilts for the veterans.
Then starting in Oct, we made Christmas stockings to be sent to the troops overseas. We made over 2000 stockings and ornaments.
We all use or purchase our own fabrics, battings, etc. and pay to ship blocks and quilts to wherever they need to go. Many or the Veteran quilts went to a hospital in Germany where injured soldiers are sent before they come home.
Doing these projects gives us a wonderful feeling of "giving back" to those in need.