Originally Posted by
sewmary
I view my charity quilts just like any other quilt I would make. In my world, if that charity quilt is not good enough to give to a family memeber then it is not good enought for anyone else. I don't believe that people who need charity deserve second hand quality or any old thing.
Absolutely!!
I work with a quilt guild of about 100 members. There is a sub-group called Queen Bees who do the community quilt work: receive and distribute fabric, make kits, design BOMs for the rest of the quild to make for these quilts, sew together one day a month, collect and distribute the quilts.
I see these tqo comments in another post: "All those fabrics were donated, and we really should use them as they were intended."
"We've become a dumping ground, every time somebody wants to clean house!"
We also have had this problem, but with careful weeding and further donation on to Goodwill, we have built a marvelous stash for our guild. It's ridiculous to hang onto something that one will never use. Of course, in our case, we are NOT quilting for animal shelters, overseas communities, or the homeless.
Our Queen Bees sub-group has about 12 regular and faithful participants who sew once a month, and receive help on blocks and assembly of quilts in the guild at large. We make between 250 and 500 quilts a year!!!! Every one of them is beautiful and is shown at show and tell.
We have so much guild membership participation BECAUSE we have this group that "manages" the community projects and designs BOMs and kits. The resulting quilts are attractive and that makes even more members want to participate. Some members make BOMs, some assemble tops, some machine quilt, some bind, some sew on labels.
500 quilts! Our biggest problem is keeping up with the batting purchase as the prices rise; that is our guild's largest expense every year.
Jan in VA