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How FaveCrafts Celebrated Our 10 Year Anniversary

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2019 marks 10 years that FaveCrafts has been online, and what a joy it has been! Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of bloggers to share wonderful crafts and inspiration for readers like you. To celebrate, we partnered with the Craft Yarn Council‘s charity Warm Up America! to collect gloves and mittens for those in need. Learn a bit more about our celebration below!

FaveCrafts turned 10 in 2019. To celebrate, we partnered with Warm Up America! to run a Gloves and Mittens Charity Drive. This pattern was created for the promotion by Alex Halsey from withalexofficial.com and can be found here.

We Asked the Craft Yarn Council What They Needed

The Craft Yarn Council is a nonprofit that sponsors a wide range of promotional and educational programs, including its highly acclaimed Certified Instructors Program, Discover Knit and Crochet classes, and its popular I Love YARN Day event (the second Friday in October). You can learn more about them at their website, craftyarncouncil.com. Their charity, Warm Up America!, accepts donations of knit and crocheted items year round for those in need. When asked, they said their biggest need at this time is for gloves and mittens!

Easy Peasy Crochet Fingerless Gloves pattern by Shawn Mosch of Crafty Chic's Blog
Easy Peasy Crochet Fingerless Gloves pattern by Shawn Mosch of Crafty Chic’s Blog. View the pattern here.

We opened up the charity drive to include crocheted and knit sections as well, suggesting that after fiber artists finished whipping up a pair of mittens, they could use the leftover yarn to create 7×9″ sections. These sections are later seamed together by WUA! volunteers to make warm afghans.

The FaveCrafts Afghan 7x9" Section by Sarah Zimmerman
This 7×9″ section pattern was designed by Sarah Zimmerman of Repeat Crafter Me.

Sarah Zimmerman of Repeat Crafter Me designed a new crochet pattern that donors could use to make the sections. Not only did she design individual sections, but she created…

The FaveCrafts Afghan

The FaveCrafts Afghan
The FaveCrafts Afghan, by Sarah Zimmerman. You can view this pattern at RepeatCrafterMe.com here, or at FaveCrafts.com here.

We were so fortunate to work with three designers for this promotion. Sarah Zimmerman from Repeat Crafter Me designed The FaveCrafts Afghan, comprised of crocheted 7×9″ sections that can be donated to Warm Up America! Alexandra Halsey of With Alex created a gorgeous beginner-friendly mittens pattern:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxIFLOThJ8L/

And Shawn Mosch of Crafty Chic’s Blog created a lovely fingerless mitts pattern tied off with a ribbon:

Check out more of the lovely Instagram posts about our charity drive at https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/favecraftsturns10/

We Made Sections at the Office

Several of the editors at Prime Publishing crochet and knit, but many of us are beginners, so gloves are a bit beyond our skill level! In order to still participate in the charity drive, we organized an in-office event for editors to learn how to knit or crochet their own sections.

Toby Teaches Morgan How to Knit
AllFreeKnitting Editor Toby teaches FaveCrafts Editor Morgan how to begin the pattern.
RecipeLion Editor Kristin and AllFreeCrochet Editor Laura begin their sections.
Kristi, Rachel, Dana, and Leith Making Sections
AllFreeKnitting Editor Kristi, Managing Editor Rachel, FaveCrafts Editor Dana, and special guest Leith making sections.

You’ll notice the special guest in our photo above—Leith! The day we hosted our party happened to also be Bring Your Child to Work Day, so Leith had the opportunity to learn how to crochet with us.

FaveCrafts 10 Year Anniversary Charity Drive
FaveCrafts Editor Dana teaches Leith how to crochet.

Warm Up America! Collected Over 800 Knit and Crocheted Items

Our Gloves and Mittens Charity Drive ran from May 1-June 30, 2019. We are pleased to announce that Warm Up America! collected:
202 Pairs of Gloves and Mittens
606 Sections

It’s Not Too Late to Get Involved

Did you miss our charity drive? Warm Up America! accepts donations year round. Check out their current needs and follow them on Facebook to see their latest requests! And, if you don’t have time to make something, you can always make a financial donation to Warm Up America!

Newborn Charity Drive + Win Red Heart Yarn Prize Package

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newborns-in-need-drive-images AllFreeKidsCrafts is extremely excited to announce our Newborns in Need Charity Drive. We have partnered with your favorite yarn brand, Red Heart, to make sure that precious newborns don’t go without. Newborns in Need is a charity that donates care necessities to ill, impoverished, or premature newborns.

Craft for a cause with our Newborns in Need Charity Drive. This drive, which will run from August 19th until September 16th, calls for crafted and/or purchased items that will help newborns stay comfortable.

Once the drive is complete, all of the donated items will be given to Newborns in Need. Before that exciting donation, one winner will randomly be chosen to win the incredible Red Heart Anne Geddes Yarn prize pack. Every single item that you donate will count as one entry, so be sure to include a slip with your name and email address with your donated items.

newborns-in-need-drive-prize

One lucky winner will get:
1 ball of each color of Anne Geddes Yarn
1 set of Size 8 tipping points needles
1 bamboo crochet hook
1 red heart thread cutter pendant
1 Crochet Today Magazine
1 Knitting Made Easy book
1 Crochet Made Easy book
1 RH Tote Bag

 

Enter to win this amazing yarn prize package, compliments of Red Heart, by donating a purchased or crafted item! Simply send us your donation, and we will take care of the rest!

When making/purchasing your newborn necessities please follow these specifications:

  • All crafted and purchased items must feel soft and be washable. If handmade and needs to be washed, it must be washed in fragrant-free baby detergent and, quickly after drying, sealed in a plastic bag.
  • If crocheting, do not use a pattern that produces large holes.
  • No ties are permitted on anything, including clothes and bibs.
  • Do not use yellow, gray, or dark colors. Please use baby pastels- pink, white, blue, light green, and lavender.
  • The items must come from a smoke-free household.

Options to Craft

An Easy Way to Help: Cut fleece in the proper size (from 30 to 36″ square), and then use a skip blade around the border, producing tiny holes. Then, crochet a border of your choice around it.

Other Choices:

Options to Purchase

  • Flannel or Fleece Receiving blankets
  • Sleepers
  • Baby wash- unscented
  • Pacifiers
  • Bottles
  • Outfits for the newborn- sleepers
  • Diaper bags or tote bags

For a full list of items to craft or purchase, rules, and more, visit our Newborns in Need Charity Drive page.

Please ship your donated items to:

Prime Publishing
AllFreeKidsCrafts Newborns In Need Drive
3400 Dundee Rd #220
Northbrook, IL 60062

Please help spread the word about this amazing opportunity to donate items to newborns in need.

Will you be donating?

If so, leave a comment below and tell us about it!

Live Coverage from CHA by Charity Wings!

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Do you love winning prizes? More importantly, do you love giving to charity? Then you need to tune into the live coverage by Charity Wings! Charity Wings has graciously set up a live feed right from their booth so you can see all the action from their point of view. How exciting is that? All you need is a raffle ticket and an  internet connection. All proceeds go to support A Place to Bark, a no kill foster and adoption rescue dedicated to the welfare of animals.

Find all the details on how to buy a ticket and join the coverage on their site. 

 

Who is Charity Wings, you ask? If you’ve never heard of them, they are a volunteer run organization that serves as a resource for crafters and artists that want to fundraise for their favorite causes. Their mission is to raise money and awareness for noble causes through unique creativity based events and online fundraisers, like this one.

So what are you waiting for? Check out all the fun at CHA and give for a good cause, it’s a win-win.

Check out full details below:

Live Event Info

Live Event Coverage

Prize Details and Show Floor Coverage

Charity Wings on Facebook

 

Crochet Charities Provide the Opportunity to Create a Finer World, One Thread at a Time

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Not everybody can be gifted at everything. I, for instance, am a terrible baker, a worse juggler, and downright dangerous if I try to combine the two. But people have unique talents too, and today we’re pleased to share a few organizations where crocheters and knitters of all skill levels are using their abilities to make a difference in the world.

The Warm Up America Foundation has been around for more than two decades, and helps people work together in creating afghans and clothes for people in need.  They’re involved in every stage of the process from training would-be-crocheters, to coordinating their efforts, collecting their finished products, and distributing these products to different charitable organizations, which means there are a lot of ways that kind-hearted crafters can pitch in.

More details on how groups and individuals can get involved are found here.

Nobody is ever too old to appreciate the effort that goes into a handmade gift.  That’s why Foster Care to Success, an organization that helps foster kids get the financial, emotional, and advisory help they need to attend college and transition into successful adults, started the Red Scarf project.

Each year they collect upwards of 10,000 red scarves to distribute to former foster kids away at universities or vocational schools.  You can learn more about how to help them here.

 

Winters in New York City can be bad.  This is doubly so if you don’t have a roof over your head or a way to come in out of the cold.  Hats For The Homeless is trying to do their part by collecting warm winter accessories to give to the less fortunate at Christmas. If you can make hats, gloves, or scarves, then Hats for the Homeless thinks you can also make a difference.

The CureCaps Hat project is a grassroots movement to fight against neurological diseases.  It starts with concerned crafters making and donating all kinds of hats, which the project then sells to raise money which is donated to leading researchers in neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases.

 

They have already distributed 15,000 dollars in research grants, and are making a difference in millions of lives.  This is a great project for those who want to feel that their efforts are helping to end diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and you can learn more about it here.

 

Do you craft for charity? How do all of you use your talents to help out, and what do you make?

 

Crochet

Jewelry

Knitting

Paper

Sewing

Thrifty