Today the bracelets YOU made leave the United States headed straight for Russia.

Approximately 35,000 bracelets were handmade.

Handmade by children and adults.

Handmade around the world.

Handmade with one goal in mind. To touch the lives of orphans living on the streets in Russia.

To those of you who made bracelets, thank you. To those of you who gathered groups of people together to make bracelets, thank you. To those of you who blogged about our endeavors here at Craft Hope, thank you. To Carin, who graciously led this project for us, thank you. Truly, thank you. Please remember the team delivering the bracelets as they spread HOPE to Russian orphans over the next 10 days!

Project 12 is now closed, but if you’d like to join this unbelievably giving Craft Hope community you can jump right in on Project 14 :: Christmas in Dixie.

“The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Spread hope, y’all.

Really. Any time now I will be buried in an avalanche of beautiful blankets. It’s kinda cool.

I have taken way to many pictures, so I have just made them into a bunch of collages.

The girls and I have been having a blast! Every day after their nap we have a box opening party. The blankets are cuddle tested and extra love is infused, then they are counted and re~folded and put somewhere.

The table is no longer holding all the blankets, as some are already gone, and others are smushed into space bags.

Sometimes everything falls into place, you are rewarded for doing good, Karma comes around, or however you want to say it. I am so happy to let you know that two amazing woman from Georgia are helping with the blanket delivery.  Last week, Dawn, a fellow Craft Hope addict, was visiting NJ and stopped by to grab a couple of boxes stuffed tight with blankets. This Tuesday, my former student, Sarah, will be here to pick up even more, on her way back to GA, from her trip to visit many friends in the North East.

Once both ladies are back in GA they will coordinate a little road trip to Tuscaloosa to drop off all the blankets. Any blankets that arrive after Tuesday, I will have to ship off to the charity. As you can see in the next snap, we are up to 233 blankets, with many more waiting to be opened with the girls tomorrow.

I see such love in every blanket. Many have amazing stories I have been privileged enough to hear. It is so inspiring. Just yesterday I received a 3 foot high box full of blankets made by women in prison. I was so touched to read about this program. By helping these woman give back, and help others, their chances of leading a better life when released goes up. If more people understood the power of helping others, I really do believe there would be less crime in the world. Maybe I am just a flower child in a bubble, but I agree with Anne Frank, people really are good at heart.

PS ~ This is Jessie, not Jade. Forgot to let you all know that!

While I’m here, it is Wen. June 15 and we are up to 338 blankets.

Hello out there in Blogland! It’s Jessie checking in with you on Project 13. The blankets are piling up, and I thought you might like a little peek.

A while back the first of the blankets arrived at my door.  I did post a bit about that here.

The first box I opened contained 7 beautiful crib blankets. They found their NJ home on my living room table. There they will hang out until they find a ride to Alabama.

Then more started showing up. Everything from simple receiving blankets to quilts that can only be described as works of art.

Kyla and Vada have been helping me admire and count each one. Kyla is laughing in this picture, really. OK, it’s a bit fuzzy. I’d try to do better.

Thursday was my birthday. I got many lovely presents, but I have to say, the one that warmed my heart the most came in two boxes from New Mexico. No name anywhere, just two boxes full of quilts and receiving blankets. Here is what the table looked like by then.

Now we are only two weeks into this project ~ making blankets can take some time. I really didn’t expect many to show until week 3 or 4. Goes to show what I know. Here is my table today. It really gives me hope for the world my children are growing into; seeing this sort of unconditional kindness and love. What amazing people are out there.

In case you were wondering, we do have to inspect the blankets for quality control.

I have to thank my amazing husband, Doug, for being so great. I believe the conversation a few weeks ago went something like this:

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I love you.”

“Yes?”

“I’m told Jade I wold collect for the Alabama blanket Craft Hope Project.”

“OK.”

“There could be hundreds.”

“OK.”

“Maybe over a thousand.”

“OK.”

“I’ll find a way to get them to Alabama without going broke.”

“OK.”

“I REALLY love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He reminds me a lot of Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only not a werewolf.

So, wondering what the count is, my friends?

Edit 5/28/11

Sometimes things just fall into place. A former student and dear friend of mine will be visiting from the Atlanta area the second week of June. I will get some space bags and pack the blankets as small as possible so we can fit as many as possible in her car on the way back. That will get them 3 hours from the charity (who is also helping the Joplin tornado victims.) From there she may have a friend who can take them, or we can find a drop off in Atlanta, or we will figure it out. As for any that don’t fit in her car, or arrive after she leaves, we’ll figure that out, too.

Those of you who have expressed a wish to help with shipping or send them straight to the charity ~

You can always include a space bag or two (those vacuum bags for storing blankets) in your box, that will help to make everything take up less room.

Items can also be shipped to:

Toomer’s For Tuscaloosa

3600 3rd Ave South

Birmingham, AL 35222

However, if you do this, PLEASE email jade@crafthope.com with the number of blankets you sent on and any pictures you would like to provide for future project 13 updates. Also, please identify your box as new, handmade blankets donated from you through CraftHope.com, Project 13. The more people who know about the difference we make when we come together as one, the more who will join us in bringing hope to others.

XOXO

Good morning! Due to some lovely and generous donations from Lark Books and Amy Butler, we have added one last update to the Craft Hope shop. There are 10 gorgeous mini quilts from the upcoming book Pretty Little Mini Quilts, three bags from Amy Butler (the actual bags – not patterns!), autographed books from Amanda Soule, and more. The shop will close its doors for good on Sunday night, so be sure to browse one more time and make sure you haven’t missed that perfect something.

Thank you again for all of your support of Craft Hope for Haiti and for helping the shop go out with a bang!

Happy First Birthday to Craft Hope! Thanks to all of you and your loving work, Craft Hope has been in operation for one year. It has been a rewarding year of blankets and hats, dolls and sock monkeys, dresses and scarves, of a new book that has gone to print, and of an outpouring of support for people who need help in Haiti, Nicaragua, India, Mexico, and here at home. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you have done with us.

The Craft Hope for Haiti shop on Etsy has been a success beyond our craziest dreams. We want to thank all of you for being a part of it. We have a few more donations that we will be listing in the shop today, and then we will be closing it down. Running a shop on Etsy that draws from so many sellers is simply not something that we can manage longer term, and we hope you understand. It has been an amazing time and we’ve gotten to know so many people who have been involved with donating items, buying them, and often both. As I’ve said before, the crafting community is full of wonderful people and we’re lucky to be a part of it. We will spend the next few weeks wrapping up the sales and paperwork associated with the shop. We are so proud of the $30,000 that we have raised together for Doctors Without Borders. It’s a remarkable gift from so many people.

We plan to forward the funds to Doctors Without Borders in approximately 45-50 days, due to some unforeseen delays at Paypal. Because of the huge volume of transactions that flowed into the Paypal account in such a short period of time, Paypal has put a hold on the funds, other than to refund to customers as necessary. While we’re not happy about this at all, we do understand that Paypal has those security measures in place for good reason. The 45 day delay will allow us to show that any unhappy customers have been treated fairly and that there will not be chargebacks to the account that would leave Paypal holding the bag. At that time, we will review the account with them and arrange for a funds transfer. If they are still holding funds after that review, then we will force the issue with them and ask for your voices, as necessary. However, at this point, we feel that giving them 45 days is reasonable, given the whirlwind nature of the fundraising and the risk of removing that much money from the account before potential chargebacks have surfaced. Frankly, we will feel better sending the funds knowing that everyone has received what they purchased or has been refunded their money. That way, we’ve all achieved our goals. We will let you know if and when it’s time to start making noise.

So the question is, where do we go from here? Craft Hope’s other projects will continue as they always have. The Orphan Foundation scarf project has an approaching deadline of February 14th and over 300 people participating. The next project is in the planning stages. The Craft Hope book is at the printer and will be released in August. There are all sorts of ways to help coming up.

We would like to continue to operate a shop for fundraising, not just for emergency needs like Craft Hope for Haiti, but for ongoing support of children in need. We’ll be doing some research on different ways of doing so and getting everything set up properly. We want to offer a craft marketplace that allows sellers to find a wide audience for their wares and donate part of the sales to charity while still benefitting from their own hard work and talent. So stay tuned while we put all of that together.

Thank you again for all of your support of the Craft Hope for Haiti shop as well as our other projects. None of this would happen without you. Remember – the shop is open until Monday. Shop while you can!

In gratitude,

Jade and Sarah

For those of you making scarves for the Orphan Foundation, the amazing Vickie Howell has created a tutorial to help you with the star stitch.

Pattern for the scarf can be found in the sidebar. It’s a downloadable pdf.  There’s still time to make a scarf, deadline is February 14th.

Wow. Just wow. Sarah here, stopping in to say thank you to everyone who has been part of the wild ride that is Craft Hope for Haiti.

As I’m sure you’ve seen on the Etsy shop, we’ve been listing and selling items nonstop since Friday morning. The response from the craft community has been amazing and overwhelming. You are a remarkable bunch of people. Jade and I and the other volunteers are humbled by your willingness to give when often you don’t have much yourselves. This experience has been a testament to the power of a connected community.

Jade and I started this effort as a quick offshoot of Craft Hope because we wanted to help and knew that sending things was not a viable option. We hatched a little idea about the shop on Etsy and figured we’d raise a few hundred dollars. We had this pie in the sky idea that we’d maybe get to $5,000 eventually. You all got us there by yesterday at noon. As of now, we’re rapidly approaching the $10,000 mark. Amazing. Overwhelming.

From a housekeeping perspective, you should know that listings are taking up to 72 hours to place on Etsy. Currently we are notifying sellers of the shipping information the day after the sale, and we will try to maintain that pace, but it may go to 2 days. We ask for your patience as we process a tremendous number of transactions. We may make an occasional listing mistake, and we’ll hope you forgive us. We have streamlined and slowed down our pace a bit so we don’t make hurried errors. There are only a few of us, and so many generous gifts.

This operation is being run by a mom with 3 kids under 5, including a 3 month old baby and by a mom who is 7 months pregnant and has 2 homeschooling kids. We are relying on the kindness of our wonderful friends (who are also all moms with babies or homeschooled kids or jobs) and our husbands who have given up their weekends to help out. The task at hand has become far larger than we can maintain for any length of time. We don’t want the program to become a victim of its own success because we were so excited to help that we didn’t take the time to set up sustainable systems.

We have decided to stop accepting donations on Wednesday evening, January 20. We will list everything we have received by the following weekend, and we will keep the store open until everything has sold. The plan is to be closed to new donations for 2 weeks while we regroup. This has taken us in a direction that we never anticipated Craft Hope going. In order to serve the community better, we are going to take a break and organize our thoughts, our systems, and our mission. While we would LOVE to just keep on going, we have to do so in a sustainable way so that we do it well and still have time to feed our children, take showers, and interact with our families on occasion.

Over the next few days, we will be forwarding funds to Doctors Without Borders and will post the transactions to this site, so you have verification of the donations. We understand that donating and buying is an act of trust by all of you, and we are committed to living up to that trust. Thank you, all of you, for giving us the opportunity to help the Haitian people in a meaningful way. Because this isn’t about us at all. It’s about the generosity of each and every one of you.

We are all so grateful to be a part of this effort, which is a small part of the larger effort to help the Haitian people. We hope you understand our reasons for regrouping in order to serve the effort even better. Thank you again for everything you have done and continue to do.

In hope,

Sarah

We are back! We had some technical difficulties for the past few days and the Craft Hope site has been down. Thank you for your patience while we got things worked out.

It said to contact billing which made it look like a billing issue, which it was not. From what my hubby told me, the site was hacked. I don’t exactly know what that means although he did try to explain it to me. I lost not only the Craft Hope site but also access to my email. Everything is back up and running again. Thank goodness! And we are moving over to a new server. Whatever that means. I just work here.

Back in Craft Hope news, the quilts have been pouring in. We have now collected over 100 quilts. Thank you just never sounds good enough. You all rock and are making quite the difference.

Carin over at Margaret’s Hope Chest did an interview with the folks at CraftSanity. Check it out here. There is a great mention about our project together.

Now that everything is back up and running I’ve got some work to do. I’ll attempt to get all caught up with emails this afternoon. Growing pains.

Hello, friends!  It has been brought to our attention that we need to discuss sock monkey eyes.  Because the monkeys will be given to children, safety must be seriously considered with the monkey eyes.  Apparently one tutorial suggests gluing the eyes.  This, obviously, is a bad idea for a child’s toy.  A lot of us are moms and know the choking hazard of eyes and noses on some stuffed animals.

Here are some acceptable ideas for the eyes…  Embroidering the eyes is going to be the safest route.  Safety eyes that are available at craft stores would also be another safe bet.  And if you do use buttons for eyes, please make sure they very secure.  I think that pretty much covers the subject of monkey eyes!

We also have this discussion on Craft Hope Nest if you have any other ideas or comments regarding the eyes.  Thank you all for your devotion to Craft Hope.

I do not believe that things in this world happen by chance.

On Friday, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to meet in person with Caroline Boudreaux, founder of the Miracle Foundation.  Caroline is an incredibly giving individual who has committed her life’s work to helping the orphans in India.  Her personal story is moving, uplifiting and encouraging.

Throughout our conversation, we kept coming back to the orphans needs and what you can do to help.  There are over 600 children in these orphanages.  Of course, they need blankets, booties and beanies but it does not stop there.  As you can imagine, these children have very little.  Certainly not anything handmade.

I wanted to let you know some of the things that we’ll also be accepting for these children if you are up to it.

They play this game in India called Seven Tiles.  It is a game comprised of stacking tiles, the tiles used to build the orphanage, and then trying to knock the stack down with a ball.  Then it turns into a sort of dodge ball.  The problem is that they play this game with tennis balls.  If you’ve ever played dodge ball with a tennis ball, you probably know how it feels to be pelted with one of the balls.

So what they are asking is for soft cotton balls.  Heavy enough to throw, but soft enough to hit someone.  Of course, it would be need to be stitched pretty heavy duty to withstand the game.  I would love to see if any of you could come up with this type of ball.  We’ve got all different types of skill levels participating in Craft Hope and I’m sure someone has a good idea for this type of ball.  If so, stitch a few up and send them on to us so that we can get them to the orphanages in India.

Their next request was for pillowcases.  Simple, pretty, clean pillowcases to use in the newborns beds.  Currently they only sleep on a plastic mattress.  The pillowcase size is the perfect size to use as a sheet to put down onto the mattress.  This project doesn’t involve any sewing whatsoever.  You can find vintage, thrifted pillowcases at the thrift store for next to nothing.  And you are giving a baby a soft place to sleep.

Their final request was for handmade handkerchiefs.  Currently, with the babies, they safety pin a tissue to their shirt so that they don’t lose it and it stays with that baby.  They use this to wipe their nose and mouth throughout the day.  A nice soft handkerchief is high on their list of needs for these babies.  And they are simple to make.  You can just cut out a square of fabric or from a vintage sheet and you have a handkerchief.  When you think about it, you could make several with just one twin size sheet.

Anytime we work with orphans, their needs do not stop at our requests.  The United Nations states that every child has the same fundamental rights no matter where they live in this world.  These are:

• The right to clean water.
• The right to adequate nutrition.
• The right to health care.
• The right to education.
• The right to a stable loving environment.
• The right to conditions of freedom and dignity.

Through our partnership with the Miracle Foundation and other organizations in the past and in the future we hope to uphold these values for all children.  The unloved.  The unwanted.  The hungry.  The sick.  The uneducated.  And the poor.

If you still want to do more, you can sponsor a child, donate a bike, donate school books.  The list goes on.  And if you want to take it to the next level, you can travel with the Miracle Foundation to India.  I encourage you, if you have the means, go.  That is one trip you will not regret.

If you would like to donate any of these items, please leave a comment and have them to us by July 25th.

Spread hope.