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The last delivery of spa bags for Safelight is planned for October. This week, more things came in, so I took an inventory of what I have and what we still need. I have plenty of money, but I need a just a few more cards and case sets. If you’ve made some and are holding onto them, go ahead and ship. For newer readers, see this post – Safelight Project – for an overview of our community service project to benefit a local shelter for abused women (and sometimes men), now in its 7th year. This year so far, we ...

This week I wanted to use the rest of the surplus of money collected for the Spa Bag project to do something fun for the Safelight Domestic Violence Shelter. I set aside what will be needed for the October delivery of the last spa bags, and found I had just enough to do a special project for this week. In the past I have found some fun water bottles with great messages, but that was not the case this year. I really couldn’t find anything I considered appropriate. The last thing I want to do is give an abuse ...

In the past two weeks, a lot has happened with the Safelight project. When I left off last time, I had just received a shipment from Dollar Tree, and was beginning to put things together.

The first thing to do at that time was to unpack all the boxes and sort into piles or baskets.

I opened up the boxes of soaps, and decided they needed to be put into some kind of bag to contain the glitter and keep the soap from rubbing off on the other items in the bag. I also needed a lot more products to ...

Now that the quilt show is over and my basement is cleared out again, I am turning my attention back to Safelight. We have plenty of funds, case sets and cards to do a nice delivery next week. For new readers, this project is one that readers and I have done annually for 7 years. Most of those years have seen at least 2 deliveries. See the kickoff post Safelight Project 2024 to learn what the spa bags are all about, and the domestic violence shelter they support.

After our last delivery in February, I received this wonderful letter from ...

We have extra funds for the Safelight project, so I put some to use this week to make Valentine gifts for the current residents of the shelter. They had 20 adults, so I made 22 gifts just in case they needed more by the time I could deliver them. I found some fun things to include.

These little felt fortune cookies had wonderful fortunes inside. The sentiments were perfect for this project, so encouraging.

I wanted to include a card inside, so I got out my inspirational stamps and looked them over for just the right thing to say. For ...

It is so fun to go to the post office these days, and find packages of case sets and cards rolling in to get us going on this year’s project. I am, as always, blown away by your creativity and generosity, as many of the handcrafted items have also contained monetary donations. Below are the cards received from Lenora S, along with case sets from Joan S and Melanie T.

Lenora’s cards are so amazing, and the insides are just as spectacular.

Gorgeous photography are on the cards received from artist and photographer Jeanie C, who blogs at ...

The Safelight Project made great headway in the past two weeks, as case sets started coming in, and checks arrived. I was stunned at the amounts on several of them, in the hundreds of dollars! So much so that I can announce that we have exceeded our financial goal!! To say thank you seems so inadequate, but to Dorothy F, Janet S, and Tina W, you are all amazing. The three of you funded over half the project! Special thanks also to Kay, Susan and Vicki, your generosity is much appreciated. Those donations along with a lot of $5-$50 ...

This past week, I got an email from the shelter director at Safelight, Morgan Abendroth. She wrote “We have used up our last spa bag and I was wondering if you are still making them. They are such a great addition to welcome clients into shelter. We would love to get more if that is possible.” I had asked them to let me know when they were down to a dozen, but with the holidays it got lost in the hustle and bustle. 

In previous years, we have come together as a community to assemble spa bags for new residents ...

Last week and this week, the Safelight Project was finished up. In the mail in the last days of the project, more case sets arrived from some wonderful readers. These lovelies came from JoAnn S and Joan S.

These arrived the same day from Holly S and Chris L.

And these wonderful sets arrived from Elana G.

While my friend Lynne was over doing her quilt, we sat at the table and put the tissues inside the tissue cases, then put them inside the cosmetic cases to get started on the assembly. We also put the cards and small lotions ...

The past two weeks have seen much progress in our Safelight Project. For new readers, once again we have come together as a community to assemble spa bags for new residents of our local domestic violence shelter. The spa bags go a long way to making a difficult transition a little better, providing much needed support for residents who are going through a horrible time in their lives, betrayed by someone they loved, fleeing abusive situations with their children and virtually nothing else. Residents said the bags helped them feel special and cared for, at a time when support was ...

It has been a slow start to this year’s Safelight Project, but we have begun to see some progress this week. I am delighted to report that we have exceeded our revised financial goal in order to deliver 50 spa bags and we will be able to do 60. Any additional funds received over the next couple of weeks will go to adding more bags to the total. It would be great to deliver 75 bags, but we’ll see what the mail brings over the next week.

Several boxes and letters arrived at once, containing checks, case sets ...

Settle in for a long post about a lot going on, things to see and read, and projects where you can participate. Around the feeder we have a lot of pretty birds, and hungry birds! This week there has been a variety of avian friends chowing down on the seed and suet, including some newcomers. When two new species showed up for the first time this year, I had to do another bird count and send it in. Here, a red bellied woodpecker shares the seed with a two goldfinches and two titmouses (hanging off the backside).

The bluebirds are ...

We haven’t done this project in quite a while, due mainly to the offices of Safelight moving to a new location, and a bit of renovating in the shelter. That plus a lack of time on my part in the first six months of last year meant the project got put aside. But now, we have time again and the shelter has room so let’s do another Safelight Project, our seventh one! In previous years, we have come together as a community to assemble spa bags for new residents of the shelter. The spa bags go a long ...

Well, I thought I was being cute on Tuesday with the video, but it didn’t get the response I thought it might. It was supposed to be a clue to let you all know a new mystery quilt along is coming in January, but only a couple of readers figured that out. I couldn’t do one last year, and I was hoping to get everyone excited for a new design. So, here is the announcement for real, coming in January, Scrap Dance Quadrille Mystery Quilt Along! The pattern is done, I just have to finish sewing the first ...

This is another busy week with not a lot of sewing going on. Last night I had the pleasure of speaking on Zoom to the Charlotte Modern Quilt Guild with my Well Loved Quilt Repair program, booked by fellow blogger Emily from Darling Dogwood. Such fun, and they had great questions! In the sewing room, I finished up the quilt repair and it is ready to be picked up, but I didn’t do any more pictures. Yesterday, I had lunch with my longarm friend, Chryste, and picked up this quilt for Safelight. She was helping with the quilting for ...

Last May, we began the Safelight Project 2021 collecting donations of sewn case sets, stamped cards and money to fund the spa bags for new residents of the local domestic violence shelter. The higher quality canvas bags are filled with full size lotions, facial cleansers, nail and hair treatments, new sunglasses, sets of spa size bath products, new hairbrush, pedicure kits, soap in crocheted holders with matching scrubbies, reader made case sets for cosmetics, tissues and sunglasses, and two handmade inspirational cards stamped by readers and me.

I had cases of some products from the first delivery in the basement ...

It has been a busy couple of weeks, with shipments and backorders arriving, case stuffing and bag filling for donation. Settle in for a long and picture heavy post. I had enough cases for the first delivery, and set some of those out on a large cardboard flat placed on the longarm to make it easier to match things up. The hairbrushes and pedicure sets were in colors, so I laid them out distributing the colors to coordinate with the case sets.

Here is a complete spa bag. The colors of the cases, hairbrushes and pedicure sets are coordinated with ...

We are making good progress to being able to deliver the first 50 bags of the Safelight Project to the shelter soon, hopefully in early June. This year has brought a change to the bags ordered, as the company I have been using doesn’t have the same ones I ordered before. So, I spent some time looking at their other offerings, but didn’t find anything as nice. So I began a search elsewhere, and ultimately ordered a new style from a different company. I actually like it better, and it was only a bit more in price, still ...

It is so fun to go to the PO box these days, lots of things coming in! By far, the most envelopes up to now have had monetary donations. I am excited that we are quickly getting close to our goal of enough to make 100 spa bags. Thank you so much to all the donors! Because of your generosity, we only need $200 to complete the bags. Every donation of $6 gets an entry in the drawings. All we need is 16 more people to give $12 to the project for it to be fully funded. Even if you ...

Checking with the Safelight Domestic Violence shelter in town this past week, they are running low on their spa bags. They have lasted a good long time this year due to the reduced capacity of the shelter. By the time we can get this project done over the next few weeks, they will be out of them altogether. So, it is time to do it again. For newer readers, Safelight is our local shelter for women fleeing abuse or violence with services of immediate intervention emergency shelter, counseling, job training, case management including help with acquiring legal services and accessing ...