Headed To Camp!

The photo displays a bag of six quilts I donated recently for a foster children's summer camp.  At the beginning of the campers' week of fun, they are given the chance to select a quilt to sleep under for the week and then take home.  I learned about the camp via an email from a quilt shop [Gossypium] not far from me.  My stack of quilts was just ready and waiting for donation to a group that might need them this summer.  

I loved making each of these quilts, in colors and color combinations that appealed to me.  I hope that they will appeal to the kids, too.  Gossypium quilt shop collects donation quilts every summer, so I'm already looking forward to starting another half dozen for 2024.  This time, I plan to select fabrics that are "kid-prints", with fabric designs and bright colors that appeal to children specifically.  This year's donation may have been selected by older campers - and I'd like for younger campers to really like what I can complete for next summer.

Gossypium emailed that 207 quilts were donated this year by quilters around our state, to their shop alone.  I trust that other service- and community-minded quilt fabric shops participated as well.  The summer week given specifically to foster kids is a nation-wide effort, it seems.  If you simply Google "Royal Family Kids Camps", you will see dozens of reference articles and websites that reach out to donors for quilts and pillowcases and funds.  

Many foster children enter foster care with just the clothes on their backs.  At the end of their camp week, they'll head to their foster home with something that is theirs to keep.  Camp is free to an attending child.  Donors throughout the country can give funds to make camp attendance possible.  

ForTheChildren.org is a good place to begin learning about this opportunity for giving children the chance to be a kid.     

 Jan. 14, 2023

For Ukraine

Twenty years ago I traveled to Ukraine twice.  The church choir in which I sang was invited to participate in a mission trip to Kyiv, and I was sent first (as part of a pre-tour group) in addition, to help solidify planning for our larger group's arrival.  During my second trip with my choir, we sang in several concert and cathedral venues, enjoying a return visit to the homes of members of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Music Mission Kyiv whom we met and had hosted during their most recent tour of the US.  

During my two visits to Kyiv, I was privileged to be introduced to and spend time with a number of widows who were 'under the wings' of the KSOC/MMK for visitations and care [food and medicines].  A number of the widows presented us with intricately cut paper snowflakes as a token of gratitude for our visiting with them.  

When I returned home, I pondered about how I might use these beautiful hand-cut paper works of art and settled on the idea to make sun prints on cotton fabric using the snowflakes as the design element.  I set the paper cut-outs outside in the sun, resting on a background base of fabric [still wet] I had just painted with blue transparent textile paint.  [Blue is one of the main colors of the Ukrainian national flag.]  An hour later, the prints were dry.  They measured a little less than 12 inches by 12 inches, a perfect quilt block size.

A month ago, I hand-quilted around some of the design elements of one print, on top of batting, and framed it under glass.  It has been a reminder of the beautiful hearts and total courage and generosity of the amazing people I met and befriended in Kyiv.  Their daily reality now is 180 degrees the opposite of what we all experienced twenty years ago.  However, an unwanted, undeserved war has not changed the hearts and resolve of the Ukrainian people we visited and came to love so deeply.