For February

Guild friends - Mark your calendars now - February is a short month and it's speeding by! Our next meeting will be Tuesday evening, February 28, from 6-8 PM at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, Ministry Center, Room D.

February Program
Our program/activity for the meeting will be making quilted hearts for the I Found a Quilted Heart Project. To learn about the project, visit the website. It's helpful to read the sections on Sewing and Sowing. See the map with Locations where hearts have been found is also very interesting!

We will make quilted hearts at the meeting and will then ask for volunteers from the guild to spread them around, to sow them

To participate, you can prepare ahead if you like by using some of the improv techniques we talked about in January and make some pieced "fabric" from which you will sew a heart. Or you can just bring fabric scraps and anything else you might want to use for embellishing your heart. It'll be a fun evening, creating these little hearts to spread a little love around our city!


Clean out your stash, share with others 
Guild members have been incredibly generous in the past in sharing fabric with others. Here are a couple of opportunities if you want to clean up and clear out and share.

Make Welcome Refugee Sewing School. Co-founder and Director, Beth Pinckney (that's me) is always happy to accept your donations of fabric. Currently, we're focusing more on garment sewing so accepting fabric in one yard or larger sizes. Cottons and knits are welcome. We also sometimes take used machines in good working order that we pass on to students who need machines, as well as notions, thread, and other sewing supplies.

The Red Bird Project. Former guild board member, Xandi Hamilton alerted us to this wonderful project. A neighbor of hers is collecting fabric, ribbon, buttons, and any other kind of embellishment to pass on to the maker of these little dresses that are sent to girls in Africa. She makes over 1000 dresses a year. If you have fabric or embellishments you'd like to share with her, bring to the guild meeting in February and Xandi will deliver. In addition, she includes a beanie baby in the pocket of each dress, so if you have a stash of forlorn beanies in a box in your attic, bring them too.

 In the next post, we'll let you know about an option for sharing your learning with the guild at our February meeting. Stay tuned ...