Bags for Children in the Hospital

Here is the stack of bags that I made this week for UCSF.

At last Friday's Pacific Piecemakers Quilt Guild (PPQG) we had a short presentation from people at Child Life Services for UCSF Children's Hospital. They are asking a lot of people to sew small welcome bags for their patients. Each patient/child receives a cloth bag with some supplies and/or information in it. They asked for three different sizes: baby, child, and teen.

We were given the pattern instructions, and asked to use child-appropriate printed fabric.

Three days later, at my small group get-together, several of us worked on our bags. Once we got the hang of it, they were quite easy to make. I came home with two completed bags. (In addition to the other things that I sewed that day.)

I forgot to mention that, at the PPQG meeting, one of our members piped up and said, kind of joking and kind of challenging, "We have about 100 people in our guild. If we all make ten, that will be 1000 bags."

So on Tuesday I sat down at my machine and whipped out eight more, so now I have ten completed. Yippee!

If I don't get any more made, I will be satisfied with ten. But I am also open to making some more of them. It's kind of a fun project, and it feels good to donate to someone's cause.

Here's a close-up of a cheery fabric

I used for some of the bags.

UCSF is University of California at San Francisco, and their hospital is one of the best around.

If you feel like helping out, just email me and I'll send you the directions and address for the bags.

I have to add that last Monday at our quilting get-together I took about 20 yards of fabric that I had culled from my collection. Some of the pieces were those "What Was I Thinking?" fabrics. Some were fabric that I still find beautiful, but know that I will never use. Anyway, I let all my friends take what they wanted, and I have a few pieces left over to put in the "Fanny Basket" at PPQG, where they will get sewn into Comfort Quilts, or Quilts of Valor.

It really felt good to lighten my stash a little bit. Besides, I had just bought a fair bit of fabric, and I don't have unlimited space!