Fundraising Next Wednesday and Thursday

Come and support us next Wednesday and Thursday in the student centre! You can 'buy' a quilt square for a toonie which will then go towards the micro-finance NGO Drombaya. Although we will accept any donation big or small. Buying squares guarantees that we will sew that square into a quilt that will then go to a person in need. The more you buy the more we sew!!

Remember that is Feb 9-10!

Newspaper

We got interviewed today!! By we I mean Sewing Patches - Sowing Progress. Cat and Ashley represented us and told them our story. It went very well and if you parlez Francais you can pick up a copy of La Rontonde on January 31st, 2011 around campus or checkout the website. Cat also has an interview lined up with The Fulcrum our english campus paper. Fantastic!

Cutting Party Two

We had another cutting party. After missing Courtney at the LRC by minutes, we finally were able to get our act together and go to the main library and cut blocks. It seems that meeting to cut as a group is difficult as this semester is very busy. Courtney, Brita, Elyse and I were able to get another 36 blocks cut and ready to go.

Quilt Number One

Okay, so I finished a quilt and as we had discussed as a group - I tried to cut up the scraps and stuff the blocks.  I apparently put too much in each one as the entire thing was so heavy! It would be a great way to make a mattress though.

Photo of very puffy blocks!

Finished quilt notice the lumps...

Quilt #1 finished

So I unpicked the stitching and cut the scraps even smaller so I could put less in each one. Theoretically this was a good idea but it seems that the scraps clump together making the quilt kind of lumpy. Warm but lumpy. 

Cutting Party!!

At 4pm our group, minus a few late comers, met int the Learning Resource Centre to cut fabric. Bella and Courtney had picked up the fabric from le bras- SIDA, sorted through it all and brought 4 large and heavy boxes to meet us. We cut blocks and cut blocks and cut some more.

Ashley and Cat practised sewing and completed one row of six blocks. After seeing the length in an actual sample we all decided to change the dimensions of the quilt. We also took into account that people outside would want to wrap the quilt around them, and so the width would have to be longer. Our new dimension for the quilts are: 6 blocks x 6 blocks. Which means 36 blocks for each person to take home, and sewing.

Again we cut more blocks.

The highlight of the evening was Courtney and Bella's matching outfits that they modelled for us. I will hunt down a picture for the blog here. What a productive evening!

Our Logo

Thank you Courtney!

A Flurry of Action!

So this is amazing! I have never worked on a project that has come together so easily. I say easily but really it has been because of a lot of hard work on the part of all of my group mates. Brita and I met after class on Friday and hammered out a tentative schedule and tasks that needed to be done. This included:

• get sewing machines for everyone involved - next friday
• organize advertising and printing of advertising materials
• organize clothing donation bins and collection
• organize booth set up to collect funds
• talk to Drombaya about goals and find out more information
• make t-shirts that we can all wear to promote our cause
• create materials to be used at fundraising booth

We also had a name: Sewing Patches - Sowing Progress. Later that evening, Brita sent over a rough copy of the proposal and soon it worked it's way through the group for editing. I contacted many people on sites like Kijiji and Craigslist to possible sell their sewing machine for a lower amount. Group members asked around posted on Facebook, and we did it. Before the following class everyone had a sewing machine.

Bella had found an organization that was willing to donate used clothing that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Courtney had a poster created. Cat had contacted newspapers about running our story. Elyse had talked to people about setting up our booths. Ashley had worked magic and somehow got us printing.

The decided action was to pick up fabric on Monday and have a cutting party. Where everyone would learn to use their new sewing machines. That's right people would be sewing for the first time!!