What didn’t happen in 2020 with my Big Give-Away happened here in 2021.

Back then, March 2020, I had scheduled a give away for the weekend when the president of Poland had just announced a lock-down which started the day before. What to do? We had it anyway - but attendance was low. We were all pretty much staying home as much as possible - including the potential recipients of quilts.

But we had it. I had a lot of leftover quilts which I just put away - though I did give a lot of quilts to the school for deaf - in Otwock. I think we gave about 20-30 quilts to them for their residential children.

But back to this year.

Because I had so many leftover from 2020 AND I made 120 in the late fall of 2020 AND finished another 120+ quilts in 2021, we had over 200 quilts to give away. That was wonderful! I know…you haven’t even seen them all yet!

As I write this blog post (Sunday), I will still be meeting with a few people to give them some more quilts in the next few days.

I’ve decided I’d like to pretty much “clear out” these quilts - that will give me more space in my room, get the quilts on to their new owners and free up my mind to start on a new batch. I know…having a head start on the next give-away is pretty nice, though.

I’m not sure, however, that I will actually give away all the children’s quilts. We’ll see. I know how much work goes into each quilt - so I’m not just going to “throw them just anywhere.” I want them to go where they will be loved and appreciated.

I want to put this quilt in the Gwiazdobranie and Dawanie auction which is raising money for sick children.

Summary - we started with 218 quilts.

I ended up with 73 quilts by the end of Saturday. Now, I did bring one of the quilts I finished lately to put in our local Jozefow “Gwiazdobranie i Dawanie” which is raising money for sick children in our town. I will put it in the auction to see what we can get for it. You may remember that I recently made two quilts to go into it as well - but those are both in a display. I thought I’d put this one right into the auction with other things people will be donating from their houses.

This means, we gave away or otherwise designated 145 quilts so far.

Of the ones I have left, we have 31 single size for adults/tweens/teens, 37 for children - featuring children’s motifs, and 5 doubles or king size they call it here.

Before we started with the give-away on Saturday, I took a quick one minute video as an overview. I’m sorry that I was in such a hurry - as I moved the camera a bit too quickly. My helpers, Ewa and Robert, were arriving and I was trying to finish before they came in. But here’s the video.

I was just arriving, so I had to turn on the lights, etc.

Children’s quilts area - there were about 20+ quilts in this room at any given time for people to choose from

The adult/teen/tween area - there were about 40+ quilts in this area at any given time to choose from. Many of you will recognize quilts from the Big Fabric Haul - all those brown ones - of which I have a lot more to quilt - tops are made - and lots from Fran - and many from you all!

We tried to keep about 12 large ones out at the same time - on the two tables that were side by side. I started with about 60 of those - or maybe a few more than that.

I did have two ladies come by on Friday afternoon and they picked up some quilts. Most of these, however, were given away on Saturday morning between 10 am and about 12:30 pm.

I did put my photos of the people who came and got quilts (most of them) into this slide show. This was my first time to do such a thing - so if you want to see the photos, just sit back and enjoy. It’s only 3 minutes long - so it won’t take too much of your time.

Some of these people came as social workers and were picking up quilts for people they care for. Others were picking up for their own families. One lady came for two friends because their health didn’t allow them to get out.

I’m not making a difference in these photos - we just asked if they would pose for a picture so we can show that these quilts are given away (and not sold) should the government ever ask us AND to show those who helped us with tops how they are being used!

If you have been part of this outreach/effort - in ANY way at all - please consider yourself thanked.

THANK YOU!

Many of you have donated tops - in the far past, recent past, or maybe are currently making tops for me/us :) and some of you have given me $$ for batting or backing! Thank you so much.

I especially appreciate Ewa who has helped me with this project as often as I needed - but she doesn’t like her picture on the internet - so this is the best I could do. Robert, her husband, came with her to help me do a lot of the heavy hauling. Our men from church brought down quite a few last Sunday, and I brought down a few during the week, but Ewa and Robert brought down the rest of the quilts (from the storage room). It was wonderful to have the help! Here, they are talking to people - but I pixelated their faces so google can’t recognize them. :)

I also want to say a special thanks to Rachael, my twin sister and the other part of Quilted Twins (the store part) - in FL, who has often been the receiving end of quilt tops. She has held them for me until we were able to get there - and has often helped with shipping things to Poland among many other things.

Even more of you have encouraged me/us with kind words and appreciation. These are helpful - esp. the words of encouragement. Appreciation is nice, too. I mean, who doesn’t like to be appreciated? LOL.

It was really interesting to me this year because now I’ve got contacts with various other places or opportunities who can use quilts. I know that many of us quilters love to sew, but we want our work to be USED - enjoyed, yes, but put to good use. That was really one of the wonderful things about this particular give-away.

This week I will be working at whittling down this pile farther by contacting organizations around here after the local people who have contacted me come and get theirs. A couple of people had conflicts with the time of the give-away on Saturday.

Here are the leftover quilts as of when I am finishing up this blog post.

I now only have 70 quilts left!!! Yeah! I gave away 3 more quilts today at church. So we have 30 singles - adult/teens/tweens, 37 singles - children’s and 3 large ones.

Here’s my storage room now! Now I can get to the bins that hold the quilt tops - so I can organize them better and begin to plan what and how I want to work on next. I’m delighted!

I held my phone up high so I could get a decent overview of all the quilt tops here in the room! I want to get back into this room and organize what I have. It helps me to see what types of tops and colors I have here. I want to see how many small, large, colorful, children’s etc. It helps me see where I need to add or what I need to do so that I can fill in the empty spots.

And that’s where we are as of right now! Take the few minutes to watch the short videos linked here to see it all.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Thanks for coming along with me on my quilting/sewing journey!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Here’s one of the beauties we have!

The Big Quilt Give-Away 2021

THANK YOU!