October 26, 2024 – clear skies – ☀️ 95°
For many years, the AZ Blankets 4 Kids Board members would host our annual October Bee. At least ten of those October Bees took place in a meeting room at Chandler Police Department. A few years were hosted from Pyle Adult Rec Center in Tempe. In 2023, our fabulous friends at Palmas Del Sol, volunteered to host our October Bee. We were thrilled! The timing of this Bee is always highly anticipated. It’s several months between Bees (previously in June at Las Palmas Grand). We’re ready to say goodbye to the hot summer and welcome cooler weather. We celebrate moving down into those double digit high temps and ushering in cooler weather with a hot soup lunch. Our hosts also provided a variety of sweet treats and coffee in the morning.
Another bit of tradition we look forward to at this Bee, is a special visit from our dear volunteer, Carol Pettis. Carol sews blankets for our kids throughout the year and makes one big, beautiful donation at the October Bee. This year, Carol and her husband, Chuck, showed up at the door with 100 quilts in tow! We had a quilt parade and walked the room with her sweet creations. After the “oohs and awws,” the blankets were sorted by size, bagged and ready to deliver to one of our many blanket recipient agencies. Thank you, Carol, for another amazing year of kindness for our kids!
With over 20 years of experience at hosting Quilting Bees, we’ve got a great process going; but we’re always happy to learn from our volunteers. One process we’re learning about and experimenting with, is the step between layering and quilting. We would spray baste 100% of our quilts in previous years. With the rising cost of spray, and at the request of some of our volunteers, we’ve added pinning to our Bee process. As with anything, the more we practice pinning, the better we get. Palmas Del Sol quilters are all pinning all the time. No spray glue for them. So we got a master class in proper pinning and we’re getting better and better with each Bee. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us!
This bee hive was buzzing with 45 volunteers. After a delicious soup lunch and ice cream sundaes for dessert, we got down to the business of prize drawings. A Fall themed five piece placemat set, donated by Mad B’s, went to our funtastic host, Ellen Outten. Ellen also accepted half of the 50/50 raffle and a certificate of appreciation from AZB4K. Our beloved Sandy Howell had the winning ticket for the 50/50 and took home a not-too-shabby $62. As always, our lovely Letty Fowell assembled a beautiful, bountiful Fall basket that went home with the lucky Bunny June Meloni from Palmas Del Sol. There were lots of free giveaways and great deals on fabric fat quarters, halves and whole yards and yarn.
By the numbers, we had 108 blankets donated at the door (100 from Carol Pettis) and 16 blankets completed at the Bee, for a grand total of 124 blankets that were delivered to our kids! Great work everyone!
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