Author: Mary

Becky recently posted this quilt she created using coins donated during our Chinese Coins Project earlier this year. She had so many requests for the pattern after doing a similar quilt that she created a tutorial showing how she made it.

I wanted to bring this back to the top of the blog as I’ve only had a handful of requests for the mailing address for sending quilts to California.

If you’d like to send a quilt for a child, please read this previous post and contact me for the mailing address.

You can reach me by email at mmcjohnson@gmail.com

HeartStrings quilters from around the US, Australia, and the UK worked on various HeartStrings projects that will go to children, homeless families, wounded veterans, breast cancer patients and more.

Darlene traveled to Cricket’s home and they worked on quilting and binding this weekend while the rest of us participated *virtually* , updating each other with our progress. The photos in the above collage show some of the projects we worked on.

Cricket was happy to report to the group that she has 75 quilts in various stages of completion + additional blocks waiting to be assembled. 40 of those quilts, made by Cricket, Darlene, Bev, and other HeartStrings members are completed and will be distributed to homeless families in about 10 days.

It all started with a stay at home retreat weekend on the Stashbuster group and Cricket and Darlene getting together in person to finish up a group of quilts to be donated to homeless shelters.

Now 30+ HeartString quilters are participating this weekend in a virtual retreat. Most of us are working on our HeartStrings blocks and quilts and a few are working on other personal projects.

Won’t you join us and make some HeartStrings blocks this weekend? If you do, email me (mmcjohnson@gmail.com) for the mailing address to send the blocks in – we’ll make sure they’re assembled into quilts and donated to charitable causes.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

The official end to Project Pink is today but don’t worry if you’re still working, Jennifer has said she’ll continue to accept these blocks for now so we won’t set a firm deadline for all the blocks to be received – yet.

However, this is one of our short term project so you’ll want to finish up and maybe get back to making some of our red and blue standard blocks before the next special project comes up. The mailing address for pink blocks can be found at this link.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We’ll continue to update our online album as more tops and quilts are completed.

Nann, a HeartStrings member put Debbi Kulick in touch with me. She is requesting quilts for children in Southern California affected by the fires.

She will be working through the Kids Need to be Kids program. Having just finished up our Purple Project, I’m hoping we will be able to help. If you would like to send quilts please email me at mmcjohnson@gmail.com for Debbi’s address. Her request is below.

As you know, southern California is under siege with the fires. There are currently 13 fires burning, over 500,000 people have had to evacuate and they expect that number to rise to over 1 million.

At this time, I would like to ask that anyone who would like to donate quilts for the children, I will be glad to accept them and help get them distributed. The children have nothing and need something to help them be kids while Mom and Dad will be dealing with FEMA, insurance companies and everyone else trying to piece their lives back together. I plan to work with Kappa Delta Sorority and work with our Kids Need to be Kids program which began with Katrina.

We will be collecting toys and books for the children too, I would love to have quilts for them along with toys and books.

We had a wonderful time on Saturday. Sheree was the perfect hostess and she wrote the following summary to share here. You can see all the photos from the sew-in at the slide-show posted on our website.


Saturday, October 20, 2007 was the third meeting for the Minnesota/WI/Upper Midwest HeartStringers. Mary, Sue & Barb, all from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN met Sheree in SE Minnesota for a VERY productive day of quilting pink. Ann, who is part of the HeartString Yahoo Group, and who lives in nearby Byron, MN came by with 50! blocks. Some of Sheree’s friends also stopped by and added to the fun and productivity of the group. And we were international with virtual quilters from Australia and the UK, not to mention others quilting pink throughout the US.

The blocks and tops we worked on will all be donated to breast cancer patients and were created from pink and white fabrics in support of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Our group of fabulous women put together 2 quilt tops from blocks brought to the sew-in, and completed 118 more blocks!

Additionally, the work HeartStrings does will be featured in the local weekly newspaper! All-in-all, it was a Heart warming experience as we spent the day enjoying each other’s company creating instruments of comfort for those who will need a soft place to land and the warmth that a quilt sewn with love can supply.

Don’t forget our MN area sew-in this coming Saturday. Details can be found at this previous post.

For those of you not able to attend in person, consider joining us on a virtual retreat and make HeartStrings blocks at home. You can either sew pink blocks for our October Project Pink or use the guidelines and sew our regular blocks.

Make sure you write in and tell us what you worked on!

Members continue to finish and donate quilts from our recent Purple Project. Here’s one finished and posted by Jennifer. She used blocks she pieced and donated blocks to make 4 Purple Project quilts. You can see these and all the purple quilts in our online album.