Quilts for Campers

For awhile now, I've been trying to find a worthy charitable cause to donate something crafty to. As a Christian, I believe that God wants me to love him with all of me, and while I have found many ways to serve God and donate of my time, money, and talents, I have never found much use for my craftiness. I've looked into Knit for Kids, the Mother Bear Project, and the Knitting for Charity site. I even thought about sewing some blankets to donate to the Hurricane Katrina victims. All of these venues offer some great resources for crafters who want to donate their talents to the needy. But something just wasn't clicking about these projects for me.

Yesterday, something clicked.

Each year in Texas, the church I attended there sponsors a camp for abused and neglected children in their local county. This camp is a nationwide effort by Royal Family Kids' Camps to provide lifelong positive memories for some of the 3 million plus cases of child abuse in this country annually. (What's that? A camp can't really make a difference, you say?) For many reasons, this is a cause that is near and dear to my own heart. While in Texas, I attended this camp as a counselor every year I possibly could. (In fact, my mother and fiancee had a hard time of it talking me out of attending camp the week before my wedding!) I meant to attend this year, but in the end camp week conflicted with hubby's vacation schedule, so here I will stay. Out of 150 camps nationwide, there is not one single camp operating in the state of Florida, while RFKC's vision is a camp in each county in the US.

Back to crafting.

I've been wondering for awhile now what I was going to do with all of this:


And this:


Each of these containers is approximately 2 feet by 3 feet and each one is about 2 feet deep. These boxes are both, as you can see, full to overflowing with fabric. (I used to work at a craft store. . .must. not. purchase. more. fabric!) Because of my hunt for a cause to donate to, my desire to purge my fabric stash, and also because of Project Spectrum (Green? I don't have any green yarn! What am I gonna make that's green?), the idea occurred to me to turn all of these fabrics into quilts for the campers who attend RFKC in my hometown in Texas. Poifect!

So off I go to volunteer my services, which, thankfully and to my delight, were immediately and very cheerfully accepted by the camp directors, and it turns out there are around 200 campers expected to attend camp next year!

Um. . .wow. Ok. . .Awesome!

So, needless to say, this little "project" will keep me busy for quite some time. I am going to call it "Quilts for Campers" so stay tuned for updates. If anyone out there has any fabric remnants they'd like to donate, or any ideas on what the fastest way to make a multiple-square quilt is (rag quilt? tacking?), I'd love to hear from you!

Till next time,
Sarah