Crafty Critters - I see myself!
Joy from the Best Friends Network wrote and said she found my entry about a project I found on the Crafty Critters community from back in January! I hopped on over and there was my site! I hadn’t seen it because I’ve not been as internet-vigilant lately, but over the past few months I’ve visited the community a fair piece. It’s pretty obvious I love animals, so I’ve visited there for good crafty-animal-charity ideas. Plus I just like the idea of the Best Friends network a lot.
Speaking of this, I’ve been working on some pet blankets (one project of many, as usual) from the many, many, many scarves that my dog and my mother-in-law’s dogs get at the beauty shop. Although I’m sure our dogs would like the blankets, they already have a lot of junk. I decided instead to give the blankets I produce (they’re kind of crazy quilts) to shelters. I had to stop working on them for a while, though and WASH them thoroughly again because of the overwhelming baby perfumey powdery scent they put on dogs. Ick. Had to get rid of it.
Joy even sent best wishes for my little Caper. I’ve been feeling pretty sad about my kitty as he slowly gets sicker, and it was really, really thoughtful of her to mention him (*sniffle*sniff*). Thanks, Joy 
Quilts & Heritage
For some reason, when I started doing posts about crafting and charity, I thought I might run out quickly. Ha! Crafters are one of the more charitable groups of people I’ve ever seen, there’s always someone wanting to get involved and use his/her skills for someone else. Knitting/crocheting and quilting alone gives me an endless supply of possibilities, not to mention the folks who sell their goods for charity.
My recent rediscovery of my Amish-inspired quilts prompted me to take a look at heritage quilts and heritage projects about quilts. Quilts are a very versatile medium, capable of depicting almost anything in fabric and thread (and other mediums, too). They are also a very practical medium. Everybody needs a blanket, so in tough times when other sorts of means of expression were out of the question due to resource and time constraints, quilts were often the method by which people’s creativity shined through. Quilts were a way to make something beautiful, to tell women’s stories, to record and commemorate important events like weddings, to bring together varied groups for social interaction, and of course to use up scraps that couldn’t be wasted to boot.
As a once-frontier nation, American has a huge quilt history. In fact, quilting was really quite altered when it traveled here, and became something it hadn’t been before.
I’ve discovered there are some organizations dedicated to preserving the history of quilting. There are a lot of resources available through these organizations for learning about quilting. Today I’m highlighting the national Alliance for American Quilts. This is a treasure trove of information about quilts and quilters. The Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving quilt heritage. They run a variety of efforts designed to foster knowledge and preserve history. The operate in partnership with others, including museums, educational institutions and local quilt organizations.
The Alliance has A LOT of projects going, and has partnered with a number of organizations to bring this effort to life. I’m impressed at the variety of efforts and the real effort toward preservation and information outreach.
- The Center for The Quilt Online is the Alliance’s home for outreach and education.
- Quilters’ S.O.S. - Save Our Stories is a project to get and save the stories of contemporary quilters. Operated with the Center For The Quilt at the Center for American Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware.
- Quilt Treasures: is an oral history project about 1960s and 1970s quilters. Operated with the Center For The Quilt at the Michigan State University Museum and the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.
- Boxes Under the Bed™: is an archival effort targeting quilt ephemera - patterns, letters, and other related items. Pending partnership with the Center for American History, University of Texas.
- The Quilt Index is the educational effort of the Alliance, and operates alongside MATRIX, the Center for Humane Arts and Letters OnLine and the MSU Museum based at Michigan State University, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Illinois State Museum, the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, the Tennessee State Library, the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, The Kentucky Quilt Project, Inc., and Quilts of Tennessee are all Index partners.
- H-Quilts is the forum of the Alliance for sharing information about the Alliance’s ongoing work. This effort is conducted with the American Quilt Study Group and MATRIX, the Center for Humane Arts and Letters OnLine.
Crafting for Charity - *Happy Dance!* I’m done!
I’ve got just bunches of stuff to show y’all this week, but first, since it’s Charity Tuesday - My Share-A-Square Afghan is finished, complete, done, and over!! It’s on its way back to Shelly with a little cloth bag for the tags when the recipient removes them. Whee!
I’m extremely pleased to have taken part in this project, and so happy I found it. What a great experience! I have pleasant memories of receiving my box and connections made across the world. I know that with my limited time I wasn’t able to contribute as much as I might have otherwise, but at least I got off my butt and contributed
At this point, Shelly has more squares than they need, and over 100 afghans are now complete. Two side projects have developed - one that’s making cloth bags to go with the afghans to store the tags.
The other project is actually collecting donations to send the kids with cancer (who are receiving the afghans) to Camp Sanguinity in July. Her last post indicates that they have enough to send 2 kids to camp at this point [update: 3!]. So if you feel inspired, the button for the PayPal donate thingie is there to the left.
I wish I could send a picture of the blanket to all the people who contributed, but I don’t really know who most of them are!
Without further ado, here’s my blanket. Here’s also the little cloth bag with drawstring that I made for the tags from the blanket. Such fun!
Below, bottom left, is the square I made for it. You can also see the border I made. I’m divided between calling it the bumblebee border and the taxi border. I thought yellow might be a nice, cheerful color for a kid.
And the polka-dot bag I made for the tags. I wanted tie ends, and so there are bells, too. My cat tried to attack them immediately. She’s a big bell fan. (That’s one huge pic of the bag. I believe that’s nearly actual size).
