Good morning! Due to some lovely and generous donations from Lark Books and Amy Butler, we have added one last update to the Craft Hope shop. There are 10 gorgeous mini quilts from the upcoming book Pretty Little Mini Quilts, three bags from Amy Butler (the actual bags – not patterns!), autographed books from Amanda Soule, and more. The shop will close its doors for good on Sunday night, so be sure to browse one more time and make sure you haven’t missed that perfect something.

Thank you again for all of your support of Craft Hope for Haiti and for helping the shop go out with a bang!

The Craft Hope for Haiti shop on Etsy has been a success beyond our craziest dreams. We want to thank all of you for being a part of it. We have a few more donations that we will be listing in the shop today, and then we will be closing it down. Running a shop on Etsy that draws from so many sellers is simply not something that we can manage longer term, and we hope you understand. It has been an amazing time and we’ve gotten to know so many people who have been involved with donating items, buying them, and often both. As I’ve said before, the crafting community is full of wonderful people and we’re lucky to be a part of it. We will spend the next few weeks wrapping up the sales and paperwork associated with the shop. We are so proud of the $30,000 that we have raised together for Doctors Without Borders. It’s a remarkable gift from so many people.

We plan to forward the funds to Doctors Without Borders in approximately 45-50 days, due to some unforeseen delays at Paypal. Because of the huge volume of transactions that flowed into the Paypal account in such a short period of time, Paypal has put a hold on the funds, other than to refund to customers as necessary. While we’re not happy about this at all, we do understand that Paypal has those security measures in place for good reason. The 45 day delay will allow us to show that any unhappy customers have been treated fairly and that there will not be chargebacks to the account that would leave Paypal holding the bag. At that time, we will review the account with them and arrange for a funds transfer. If they are still holding funds after that review, then we will force the issue with them and ask for your voices, as necessary. However, at this point, we feel that giving them 45 days is reasonable, given the whirlwind nature of the fundraising and the risk of removing that much money from the account before potential chargebacks have surfaced. Frankly, we will feel better sending the funds knowing that everyone has received what they purchased or has been refunded their money. That way, we’ve all achieved our goals. We will let you know if and when it’s time to start making noise.

So the question is, where do we go from here? Craft Hope’s other projects will continue as they always have. The Orphan Foundation scarf project has an approaching deadline of February 14th and over 300 people participating. The next project is in the planning stages. The Craft Hope book is at the printer and will be released in August. There are all sorts of ways to help coming up.

We would like to continue to operate a shop for fundraising, not just for emergency needs like Craft Hope for Haiti, but for ongoing support of children in need. We’ll be doing some research on different ways of doing so and getting everything set up properly. We want to offer a craft marketplace that allows sellers to find a wide audience for their wares and donate part of the sales to charity while still benefitting from their own hard work and talent. So stay tuned while we put all of that together.

Thank you again for all of your support of the Craft Hope for Haiti shop as well as our other projects. None of this would happen without you. Remember – the shop is open until Monday. Shop while you can!

In gratitude,

Jade and Sarah

Pattern for the scarf can be found in the sidebar. It’s a downloadable pdf.  There’s still time to make a scarf, deadline is February 14th.

As I’m sure you’ve seen on the Etsy shop, we’ve been listing and selling items nonstop since Friday morning. The response from the craft community has been amazing and overwhelming. You are a remarkable bunch of people. Jade and I and the other volunteers are humbled by your willingness to give when often you don’t have much yourselves. This experience has been a testament to the power of a connected community.

Jade and I started this effort as a quick offshoot of Craft Hope because we wanted to help and knew that sending things was not a viable option. We hatched a little idea about the shop on Etsy and figured we’d raise a few hundred dollars. We had this pie in the sky idea that we’d maybe get to $5,000 eventually. You all got us there by yesterday at noon. As of now, we’re rapidly approaching the $10,000 mark. Amazing. Overwhelming.

From a housekeeping perspective, you should know that listings are taking up to 72 hours to place on Etsy. Currently we are notifying sellers of the shipping information the day after the sale, and we will try to maintain that pace, but it may go to 2 days. We ask for your patience as we process a tremendous number of transactions. We may make an occasional listing mistake, and we’ll hope you forgive us. We have streamlined and slowed down our pace a bit so we don’t make hurried errors. There are only a few of us, and so many generous gifts.

This operation is being run by a mom with 3 kids under 5, including a 3 month old baby and by a mom who is 7 months pregnant and has 2 homeschooling kids. We are relying on the kindness of our wonderful friends (who are also all moms with babies or homeschooled kids or jobs) and our husbands who have given up their weekends to help out. The task at hand has become far larger than we can maintain for any length of time. We don’t want the program to become a victim of its own success because we were so excited to help that we didn’t take the time to set up sustainable systems.

We have decided to stop accepting donations on Wednesday evening, January 20. We will list everything we have received by the following weekend, and we will keep the store open until everything has sold. The plan is to be closed to new donations for 2 weeks while we regroup. This has taken us in a direction that we never anticipated Craft Hope going. In order to serve the community better, we are going to take a break and organize our thoughts, our systems, and our mission. While we would LOVE to just keep on going, we have to do so in a sustainable way so that we do it well and still have time to feed our children, take showers, and interact with our families on occasion.

Over the next few days, we will be forwarding funds to Doctors Without Borders and will post the transactions to this site, so you have verification of the donations. We understand that donating and buying is an act of trust by all of you, and we are committed to living up to that trust. Thank you, all of you, for giving us the opportunity to help the Haitian people in a meaningful way. Because this isn’t about us at all. It’s about the generosity of each and every one of you.

We are all so grateful to be a part of this effort, which is a small part of the larger effort to help the Haitian people. We hope you understand our reasons for regrouping in order to serve the effort even better. Thank you again for everything you have done and continue to do.

In hope,

Sarah

It said to contact billing which made it look like a billing issue, which it was not. From what my hubby told me, the site was hacked. I don’t exactly know what that means although he did try to explain it to me. I lost not only the Craft Hope site but also access to my email. Everything is back up and running again. Thank goodness! And we are moving over to a new server. Whatever that means. I just work here.

Back in Craft Hope news, the quilts have been pouring in. We have now collected over 100 quilts. Thank you just never sounds good enough. You all rock and are making quite the difference.

Carin over at Margaret’s Hope Chest did an interview with the folks at CraftSanity. Check it out here. There is a great mention about our project together.

Now that everything is back up and running I’ve got some work to do. I’ll attempt to get all caught up with emails this afternoon. Growing pains.

Hello, friends!  It has been brought to our attention that we need to discuss sock monkey eyes.  Because the monkeys will be given to children, safety must be seriously considered with the monkey eyes.  Apparently one tutorial suggests gluing the eyes.  This, obviously, is a bad idea for a child’s toy.  A lot of us are moms and know the choking hazard of eyes and noses on some stuffed animals.

Here are some acceptable ideas for the eyes…  Embroidering the eyes is going to be the safest route.  Safety eyes that are available at craft stores would also be another safe bet.  And if you do use buttons for eyes, please make sure they very secure.  I think that pretty much covers the subject of monkey eyes!

We also have this discussion on Craft Hope Nest if you have any other ideas or comments regarding the eyes.  Thank you all for your devotion to Craft Hope.

On Friday, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to meet in person with Caroline Boudreaux, founder of the Miracle Foundation.  Caroline is an incredibly giving individual who has committed her life’s work to helping the orphans in India.  Her personal story is moving, uplifiting and encouraging.

Throughout our conversation, we kept coming back to the orphans needs and what you can do to help.  There are over 600 children in these orphanages.  Of course, they need blankets, booties and beanies but it does not stop there.  As you can imagine, these children have very little.  Certainly not anything handmade.

I wanted to let you know some of the things that we’ll also be accepting for these children if you are up to it.

They play this game in India called Seven Tiles.  It is a game comprised of stacking tiles, the tiles used to build the orphanage, and then trying to knock the stack down with a ball.  Then it turns into a sort of dodge ball.  The problem is that they play this game with tennis balls.  If you’ve ever played dodge ball with a tennis ball, you probably know how it feels to be pelted with one of the balls.

So what they are asking is for soft cotton balls.  Heavy enough to throw, but soft enough to hit someone.  Of course, it would be need to be stitched pretty heavy duty to withstand the game.  I would love to see if any of you could come up with this type of ball.  We’ve got all different types of skill levels participating in Craft Hope and I’m sure someone has a good idea for this type of ball.  If so, stitch a few up and send them on to us so that we can get them to the orphanages in India.

Their next request was for pillowcases.  Simple, pretty, clean pillowcases to use in the newborns beds.  Currently they only sleep on a plastic mattress.  The pillowcase size is the perfect size to use as a sheet to put down onto the mattress.  This project doesn’t involve any sewing whatsoever.  You can find vintage, thrifted pillowcases at the thrift store for next to nothing.  And you are giving a baby a soft place to sleep.

Their final request was for handmade handkerchiefs.  Currently, with the babies, they safety pin a tissue to their shirt so that they don’t lose it and it stays with that baby.  They use this to wipe their nose and mouth throughout the day.  A nice soft handkerchief is high on their list of needs for these babies.  And they are simple to make.  You can just cut out a square of fabric or from a vintage sheet and you have a handkerchief.  When you think about it, you could make several with just one twin size sheet.

Anytime we work with orphans, their needs do not stop at our requests.  The United Nations states that every child has the same fundamental rights no matter where they live in this world.  These are:

• The right to clean water.
• The right to adequate nutrition.
• The right to health care.
• The right to education.
• The right to a stable loving environment.
• The right to conditions of freedom and dignity.

Through our partnership with the Miracle Foundation and other organizations in the past and in the future we hope to uphold these values for all children.  The unloved.  The unwanted.  The hungry.  The sick.  The uneducated.  And the poor.

If you still want to do more, you can sponsor a child, donate a bike, donate school books.  The list goes on.  And if you want to take it to the next level, you can travel with the Miracle Foundation to India.  I encourage you, if you have the means, go.  That is one trip you will not regret.

If you would like to donate any of these items, please leave a comment and have them to us by July 25th.

Spread hope.

There is still plenty of time to sign up if you haven’t done so already, the deadline is not until July 25th so we’ve got exactly a month to get all of the booties, blankets and beanies to Craft Hope.  Simply leave a comment and I’ll reply with the information you’ll need.

We have big news over here at Craft Hope.  I also blog at chik austin so pop on over and see our big announcement.

I think Gandhi said it best “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”  You, my friends, fit that description perfectly.  Thank you.

Very exciting times are ahead for Craft Hope and I’m so glad to have all of you on board!

You can now follow Craft Hope on Twitter!  Simply search for Craft Hope on Twitter and keep up to date with all of the latest happenings.

In our sidebar, look to your right, there is now a newsletter sign-up.  Simply enter your email address and you’ll receive the monthly Craft Hope newsletter.

Only 3 weeks left to get your dolls into Craft Hope.  Thank you for those of you who signed up.  If you are new and want to participate, there is still need.

Happy Memorial Day weekend friends!  Have a great one.

And for my mama’s that are making dresses for this first project, I need them by this Friday.  Please.  I’m getting started on my shorts today and hope they will turn out as cute as Stefani’s.

Also, please remember to add your creations to our flickr group.  Thanks for all that you are doing.