What a busy time at Grand Canyon University and Luke Air Force base! 5,139 very happy kids. We had 3,189 school kids, 1,162 foster kids and 788 kids at Luke. In addition to the days with the kids, 7 more days were spent with the boxes being delivered, set up and tear down.
Thank you so much for the volunteers who created all our items and then helped our kids shop. In addition to our regular volunteers, we thank volunteers from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Discover Financial, USAA, General Federation of Women’s Club, Amwins Insurance Brokerage, GCU, NCL groups and Boys Team Charities. I am sure that I probably missed a few companies but we appreciate every volunteer. We couldn’t have 5,139 happy smiles without every volunteer. We also are very grateful for the families who support us, the children, grandchildren and spouses who volunteered with us. Having the family support is vital to what we all accomplish. We had over 250 volunteers working with us in Stitches of Love.
Our next Open House will be September 14 and I encourage everyone to spend the time before Open House finishing and creating your personal projects. Let’s have a show and share at our September meeting and see your accomplishments.
In addition to pink and purple, the favorite color was blue then red. Most disliked color was brown (yes we still had all shades of brown hats and purses) and orange. Please do not use brown, tan or other shades of brown yarn in hats and purses.
The boys loved sport themes, Star Wars, Minions, action figures and any red, white and blue.
The kids loved all the accessories, so no changes there. We also did not run out of any accessories although it was very tight on boy hats (we kept taking from the girl hats). I heard no one ask for a scarf, darn it! I liked making those. But the decision to drop them was wise. We did have some too small hats, mainly from the loom. Please make sure you are using the 36 peg loom. Trying to find that small head for that small hat, impossible. The bigger the better for hair accessories including something on the headbands. Just yarn wrapped headbands finally did go on Thursday.
We are still struggling with the girls in size 14 and up. Based on what we observed, what the girls said and our volunteer surveys, we have decided that we will accept only tops in size 14 and up. We had some dresses and skirts that the girls loved and those flew out the door. I will work with those individuals to continue to create/donate those items. After shopping at Kohl’s and Amazon, we are heading in the right direction with our tops, we need to make sure we are using the right fabric. We will have more details and examples in September.
As usual, we did not have enough boy shirts but we did have volunteers who said they would like to help us create more. If you are interested, please email me with day/times that would work best for you. I know many of you are working, so evenings, Saturday and Sundays are definitely possible. We would have the classes at the Back to School Clothing Drive office where we have sewing machines and sergers. My thoughts are to have several sessions starting with fabric layout/cutting, main construction then finishing.
We also are planning a wallet sewing class right after the October Open House. This class will be about an hour. Once you have done it several times, you can create a wallet in less than 15 minutes, seriously! Walt is making kits for the class and we will have sewing machines and sergers (not necessary). I will have a sign up sheet at the September Open House.
Noted below are 2 links in case you missed the adorable comments from the kids about us and the video from Back to School highlighting our entire event.
https://www.azfamily.com/video/gcu-host-back-to-school-clothing-drive-for-phoenix-kids/video_d2389e9e-fc99-5172-95a3-96c9eee53b21.html
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157533384262915&id=114491477914
Again, thank you for everything you have all done in the past year to make our distribution so successful.
Sandy
Gloria
Mary
Patty
Julie
Jane
Chris