What a great Open House! Almost 50 attended, a full rack of clothing and tons of accessories! Thank you all so much.
What a wonderful luncheon! Thank you to all who attended. We added 2 businesses to our Angel Plaque, Bernina Connection and 35th Ave Sew and Vac. Bernina Connection is located at 40th Street and holds a quarterly sew day for us, in addition to donating fabric. 35th Ave Sew and Vac lets us use a classroom every month to sew, sponsors a yearly pillowcase event for us and they also give us fabric. Many thanks to both organizations! We added Mary Jo Kruse and Joan Fenlon for their many years of volunteering and their ongoing support of the sew days at the Beatitudes. Norma Buckwald was added for her boundless energy in hosting the weekly sew days at the Beatitudes and keeping track of their inventory and volunteer hours. We also honored Kathy McCarthy for her tireless hours of clothes shopping that she does for us.
I found out that the Doodles Knit fabric from Joann’s has very bad shrinkage. Unfortunately some of the knit kits I created is with this fabric. Please wash any of the knit fabric in hot water and use the hot (regular) dryer setting. If you could measure the before and after yardage and let me know how much it shrank, that would be appreciated. I will add a note in the kits still at the office. I realize some of these items have been already placed in inventory and boxed up so all we can do is correct the situation going forward.
Thank you all for your support of the Girl Scouts! About 50 boxes were sold. Sweet Miss Shelby stood in front of our group and told us about her troup’s cookie selling goal of 3,000 boxes and her personal goal of 500 boxes. They have 7 boxes left, amazing! Shelby told us of their 2021 plans to visit Savanna, Georgia the birthplace of the Girl Scouts. We also talked about her upcoming birthday when she will collect gently used stuffed toys and donate them to the Phoenix Police Department. She started this on her 3rd birthday and has collected 300-500 stuffed toys every year. These are placed in the police cars to give to a child during a stressful situation. If you have any gently used stuffed toys, please bring them to any Open House and I will get them to Shelby.
Our latest inventory is attached. We are coming along nicely. The bottoms in the woman sizes are leggings I purchased online from Old Navy at $5.00 each. Fantastic price and a variety of prints and solids. We really need tops to go with these. Grab some plain t-shirts and give them some love. We are at goal for girl key chains so please hang onto any you have. We do still need the boys key chain kits completed and turned in. We are still running behind in tops, so we would be appreciative of those items. We had several items turned in using the different prints (in the same garment) and they all looked great! We also had hats using brown yarn -about 35 of them. Please remember no brown yarn. These were removed from inventory and Julie took them to donate at a homeless shelter.
If you are calling me and I don’t answer, please leave me a message and I will return your call. I don’t have everyone’s phone number and I am no longer answering unknown phone calls.
Mary and Julie talked about another 501c3 organization we would like to help out, Go with the Flow AZ. This organization is supplying girls in Title 1 schools the supplies they need for their monthly periods. My initial reaction was, schools here in Phoenix? We were told that girls here in town are missing school because their families do not have supplies for them. The machines are no longer in the school bathrooms requiring the girls to see the school nurse, who have a very limited supply. The teachers are trying to fill in this gap along with other supplies they are purchasing. The organization started with the high schools, then middle schools and now are reaching out to the 4th, 5th and 6th grade levels. In August they stuffed 3,000 periods packs to give to schools to start the school year. They are always accepting donations of thin pads and tampons, but we are going to concentrate on thin pads for the 4th, 5th and 6th graders. They also are collecting make-up bags and other small bags to hold the pads so they can easily be given to a girl by her teacher. We will have a box set up to collect any donations. We decided to use a pattern similar to a fold top sandwich bag. These need to be securely closed (we decided to use ribbon) and do not have a handle or strap. 6 of us stayed after Open House and 120 were quickly created (with the exception of the ribbon)! We will have a formal sew event after our March Open House where we will be cutting and sewing these period packs. We will have an assembly line like we do for the OCJ Santa bags to cut, serge, sew, add ribbon and stuff these period packs, so we will need all kinds of help. If you have any fabric in sizes of 7-8″ by 14-16″ please bring them to donate. Our plan is to stay for a few hours. Julie will have instructions on making these. Today after visiting the Open House at Go with the Flow, we decided that on our sew day at 35th Ave Sew and Vac on February 23, we would like to create more period packs. You will need to bring your sewing machine or serger, fabric as noted above and 1/4 to 1/2 in wide ribbon. We will be there from 10-2 and can accept any completed pack or pads/tampons.
How many of you can read that super, super small print on the end of a sewing machine needle? I can’t even with a magnifying glass!! I found a posting on Facebook showing what the colors mean on the needles. I was able to download this and print to hand out. I am also attaching a copy, just make sure you print it in color. I really hope you can open this file as I struggled to get it from Facebook to my laptop! If not, I will have printed copies at the March Open House.
I am also attaching our event calendar thru May. If you have any questions, please call me.
The Back to School Clothing Drive is looking for a volunteer to help out with computer input and phone calls to schools about 5-7 hours every week. Times are flexible but will be needed every week. If you would like to volunteer, please call Janette at the office, 602-256-9408.
Thank you for everything you do for our kids. We appreciate you and you all are our “Angels”.
Sandy