Hi everyone,

We hope you can make it to our first Open House for the 2025 Distribution.  We will continue our time frame of 9-12.   Our plan is to have a meeting every other month.  We will have a meeting this month from 10-11 (at the latest) where we will go over the likes and dislikes of distribution.  Due to space limitations, you will not be able to select supplies during the meeting.  I will send out a recap of our discussion after the meeting.

We will have a limited number of pillowcase kits available in September and October, so we decided to limit you to 4 kits (20 pillowcases) up to 11:00.  After 11:00, you can take all the kits you want.  We are hopeful that this will prevent all the kits from being taken at 9:00.  I am having a back procedure done at the end of September so our plan is to have a pillowcase cutting day at the end of October to the first of November then we can have lots of kits available in November.  We will not have an Open House in December and January as  January will be our Annual Appreciation Luncheon. The luncheon will be on January 11 and I will have a sign up sheet available.

If you make pillowcases, please do NOT iron them.  We found many boxes of mildew, stinky pillowcase and ended up having to wash several hundred.  The only thing we could figure out is steam was used to iron them and they were not completely dried when folded and boxed up. One icky pillowcase contaminated the whole box!  What a mess!!  Pillowcases do not need to be ironed!  Please use caution when using steam to iron clothes also.  Most of us iron as we sew but we hang up the clothes giving them time to dry before they are turned in.  We haven’t had any issues with clothes, but it did make us think about the potential.

As a reminder, please do not put any returned supplies in the drawers or shelves.  We have been cleaning and straightening up and found some very strange things.  Please think about what you are donating to see if we will really use it.  If we do not use it, it will be thrown in the trash.  In general, we do not accept donations and we will be more firm about that in the future as it takes many volunteer hours to go thru it.

One issue that comes up every year is hair scrunchies.  Yes, I know that they are popular, but I do not want thousands of ugly scrunchies and I do not want to monitor them.  I asked last year for a volunteer to oversee this and no one volunteered but I will ask again.  Here are the duties:
       1. You will take the scrunchies home every month and review them to make sure they are made correctly and in bright colorful colors.  Our goal would be to limit the total to 750.  That may seem like alot but we had thousands before and it took years for the girls to select them.  We did end up tossing alot.

IF someone volunteers, here will be the quidelines 
      1.  We will not have kits but you can use your leftover dress fabric.  Please do not clear out your stash of older style fabric.  This was the problem in the past and these will be thrown into the trash.
       2.  Do NOT add the scrunchies to your inventory but drop them into a box.  The volunteer will sort thru them for quality and fabric selection and we will stop collecting them at 750.
      
You can still make a matching one and attach it to your outfit or place inside your purse.  Do not add the scrunchies to your inventory sheet.  Always add the matching purse to your inventory. 

Thank you all for what you do and we hope to see you on Saturday.

Sandy