My patriotic afghan project (new pic up!!)

sbp · 05-17-2009, 05:23:18 PM

I'm the chairperson for my dh's Marine Corps League's overseas coupon project and I am always looking for ways to raise money for the postage necessary to get them to where they need to go.

One thing that I do is raffle off a boxful of food (frees or practically frees) and have the bartender at the Vets Club sell chances for $1 apiece. Usually in a weekend, I can raise enough money to send 2 to 3 boxes. Depending on the deals and what I have in my stockpile determines how often I put a box together, as I like to have a fair selection of stuff.

I was trying to figure out something else I could do to raise some postage money. I know that quilt raffles usually do pretty well, but I'm so not a great sewer, much less a quilter and I don't know anyone that quilts that would want to donate the time and materials to make one for me. So I started to think about what I myself could do well enough that someone would actually want and would take a chance in a raffle for.

Then it hit me!! Downstairs in one of several totes of my cross-stitch stash, I have a piece of afghan cloth (picked up on clearance of course!) that I can cross-stitch patriotic motifs onto and raffle that off when it's done. So that's my plan.

The cloth has 63) 5-inch squares and I've got my layout planned as far as which blocks will have stitching and which ones will be blank - there's no way that every square will be stitched because a) it would take me forever! and b) it would look way too busy and crazy!!!

Now I just need to get my patterns lined up and I can start stitching away and get this underway. I've only looked through half of my cross stitch leaflets and magazines so far and have quite a few charts to choose from, but I'm also going to go on an online search for some patriotic freebie charts!

In a perfect world I'd love to have this finished by the end of August - then I can enter it in the county fair and try for a ribbon and then I will raffle it off after that. In a less than perfect world, I'll have it done by the beginning of October and pick a winner on Veteran's Day.

I'll let you all know when I start the stitching process and as I go I''ll post pics of the finished blocks as I know your comments will keep me motivated and on task.