Sewing Night for a Cause

On Friday night, Elizabeth invited a group of us to her place for a sewing night. It had been a while since we sewed together, and Elizabeth had a plan.

We did a charity project to create cage blankets for donation to a local animal shelter. Specifically, this shelter, where she got Hamlet.

Elizabeth had already cut a bunch of blankets out of scrap fabric, in varying sizes. She also cut out some cute little heart appliqués and had stitched them on. I brought some batting and some scraps to use for blankets as well. All we had to do was stitch the blankets together with a little bit of batting attached.  Our tactic was to put the two blanket pieces right side together, and a piece of batting on top. Then we stitched around the outside edges, leaving a hole for turning. After turning the blankets right side out, we top stitched them closed, sometimes even going completely around the blanket again.

Here is our hostess-with-the-mostest, looking fabulous as she works on a blanket.

Some folks did some cutting on the blankets that were not pre-cut, while those of us with machines stitched them together.  Here is Hamlet, helping Melanie with the cutting… he was making sure the blankets were soft enough.

Sally was by far the fastest at getting these things put together. I think she did 5 of them?  Then again, she is a fan of making quilts, so this was right in her wheelhouse.

Here is Liz, hard at work on a blanket.  She had some machine woes that night, and wound up knitting after the frustration became too much.  Kelly was knitting too, so it worked out well 🙂

In total, we made at least a dozen blankets. Elizabeth even put zippers on one or two of hers.  Here is the pile of blankets, though it must be midway through the evening, as it does not include them all.

Of course, there was girl talk and munches while we worked – guac and fruit salsa with chips, cupcakes, chocolate, wine … Yum!

After folks finished with blankets, we worked on other projects.  Sally pieced together the squares for a t-shirt quilt she had cut a while ago.  Now she only needs batting and the back of the quilt!  I stitched the Freddy sweater up the sleeves and the sides so that it would be ready for a fitting the next day.  Then I spent some time cutting out a pattern.  Not sure why, but I decided this was a good way to cut said pattern.

I think we will do more things like this in the future, it was nice to feel like we were contributing to something other than the sewing community’s creative cursing library. Cheers!