The Preemie Project Group Blog

Thank you January 2009 Work Group Volunteers!

TPP headquarters was exceptionally busy this past weekend.  Volunteers from as far as Ottumwa, IA attended our January 2009 Work Group Weekend.  As always, we sent out our desperate plea for volunteers and were not disappointed.  Day One (Saturday) was spent sewing flannel on flannel and fleece on flannel blankets.  With the help of 15+ hard working TPP volunteers, we finished ~130 blankets for the UIHC NICU and PICU in just under 5 hours.  Now that is amazing

We are very grateful for hard working TPP volunteers.  They worked so hard that there were a few jokes about “Laura’s TPP sweatshop” being tossed around by some of the seasoned work group volunteers.  (They like to give me a hard time and I probably deserve it.)  We worked hard but still had a lot of fun! 

These ladies were kept busy all day with trimming, turning and ironing blankets. 

You don’t need to know how to sew to help with these events!  Thank you to our non-sewers Ellen Leenheers, Laurey Easland, Rita Schmidt, Dawn Wilson, Kerry Dlouhy, Audrey Knox and Nancy Fisher for your help!

We also kept our blanket sewers very busy.  Luckily I don’t think that anyone’s machine died this weekend.  (Except for one of my mom’s!) 

Thank you to our blanket sewers: Isabel Zvorak, Michele Hogue, Deb Gilpin, Janet, Susan Smith, Carla Lyons, Kim Horras, Mary Anne Sheets and Sheri Null.  You ladies are awesome!  Thank you the ladies for washing fabric and cutting out blankets ahead of time: Michele Hogue, Chris Miller, Mary Anne Sheets (I apologize if I missed anyone.).  These weekends wouldn’t be successful without your help.

Day Two was spent working on TPPs newest project, the blanket sleepers for the Back to Sleep Campaign.  Until last week, we hadn’t realized that Feb 1st was Superbowl Sunday.  So as expected we had a smaller crowd on Sunday.  Thank you to these few brave souls who attended: Carla Lyons, Michele Hogue, Sheri Null, Isabel Zvorak, Judy Carpenter and Colleen Bell.  I also want to thank Cindy Dayton and her women’s group for cutting out sleepers for the work group.  We appreciate you!

In the “Snap Department” we have Judy and Colleen.  Judy is usually our “Sunday Blanket Ironer”.  Since we weren’t making blankets, Judy was forced into a new department.  She did a great job! 

These ladies are great (Isabel, Carla, Sheri)!  They never miss a work group.  Sheri is an excellent seamstress and was put in charge of zippers early in the day.  These ladies had an excellent system down for sewing these blankets.  Carla was turning down the arm holes and neck, then Sheri added the zippers and finally Isabel added a TPP tag and the seam around the outside.  They did a great job!

At the end of Day Two we had ~100 finished sleepers!  Some of these had been sewn by Linda Aker (my mom and TPP Board Member, who is in charge of the Blanket Sleepers) and Sheri Null before.  Others had been started by Linda and finished by volunteers on Sunday.  We estimate that we did make ~50 from start to finish! 

An assortment of colors:

A closer look at the cuteness:

We plan to make the pattern for the sleepers available on the website.  Watch the blog for information about the pattern.  In the meantime, we have a need for BLANKETS.  With the addition of the blanket sleepers, we will not be able to make as many blankets at the quarterly work group weekends.  We accept knit, crochet and sewn blankets.  Blankets must be AT LEAST 25’ by 25’ and preferably at least 30” by 30”