The Preemie Project Group Blog

GO HAWKS!

Our 4th annual, “Hawkeye Donation” was delivered to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) NICU and PICU on Friday.  Like previous years, we delivered this donation the Friday before the first home football game in support of the Iowa Hawkeyes.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Iowa City, the UIHC is across the street from the football stadium.  A few of the labor and delivery suites actually overlook it!  Many families are huge Hawkeye fans and they really appreciate this special donation. 

The nurses were SO excited for our donation this year.  They were “hoping” that we would be making another donation this year but were unsure.  So they had started to hide yellow blankets for their babies days in advance.  The nursing assistant who accepted the donation was so excited that every baby would have a Hawkeye blanket for the weekend!

This year we donated blankets sewn collectively by TPP volunteers.  In August, our Community Sewing Weekend volunteers made blankets out of Hawkeye print fleece and flannel. 

We also challenged our local and national volunteers to send in Black and Gold and Pink and White hats and booties in various sizes to match the blankets.  Here is just a few pics highlighting the cuteness we received this year:

Ribbon Hat by Andrea Knepper

Chris Miller embroidered her hats with Hawkeye decals!  Such a nice touch!

More Hawkeye Decals by Deb Nollen-Richter

The LDS Church of Dubuque volunteers broke out the Old Time Hawkeye Colors!

These sets by Judy Carpenter are too adorable.  How did she do those striping patterns?!
 

Although we did not reach our goals, we still received a very respectable 84 hat and bootie sets!

Unfortunately we did not get the obligatory “group shot” of the whole donation like last year.  Our kitchen and dining room tables are currently covered with fabric for the October Work Group.  However, we did get a photo of everything bagged up.  This gives you an idea of how large this donation is.  It took us 2 trips of loading and unloading two wheelchairs to get everything up to the units!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this donation.  We are looking for crafters to help with our upcoming Pumpkin Donation.  We hope you will help us create our baby pumpkin patch at the UIHC, NICU!