Design, Sell, & Shop Fabric, Wallpaper, & Gift Wrap
This past Saturday, over 30 community members and Spoonflower employees spent the afternoon sewing RARE Bears for one-of-a-kind kids supported by RARE Science Inc., a non-profit research organization accelerating cures for rare childhood diseases. On this very special afternoon, quilt guilds, sewing groups, and crafty individuals stitched up bears all over the country to Spring into Action. From California to here in Durham, North Carolina, it was RARE Bear mania!
Have you ever searched the Spoonflower Marketplace looking for the perfect design for your next project and stumbled across a cut and sew softie pattern but just didn’t know who you could gift it to? I’ve certainly experienced this while looking for designs to use for a project and discovered a handful of absolutely adorable plushie patterns that caught my imagination. Weeks later, the plushie patterns still popped up in the back of my mind in the form of dancing pigs and I knew those patterns had to be mine!
It’s pretty tough to have a bad day at work when you’ve got an adorable pig plushie and elephant waiting to greet you on the couch!
However, there was just one problem: the current fabric real estate in my not-so-spacious apartment was running low and these plushie pals would need to be gifted soon! Luckily, thanks to the creativity and generosity of Australian native Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mikes, my plushie pals would not be left without a home. For the past 9 years, Pip has been creating homes for plushies through Softies for Mirabel, a handmade toy drive for children supported by the Mirabel Foundation.
While Australia may be a hop, skip, and a jump from the Spoonflower headquarters in Durham, North Carolina, we’re always looking for ways to contribute our creative skills to bring a ray of happiness to those who need it most. We are pleased to announce that for the 4th year in a row, Spoonflower will be a drop off location for those interested in donating to Softies for Mirabel!
Spoonflower community members proudly display their softies donated during the 2014 Softies for Mirabel handmade toy drive.
Are you ready to craft for a cause? Learn how to get involved below:
Pins & Needles: Head over to Meetup to RSVP for our upcoming sewing social on November 17th! We will be printing a variety of our favorite cut-and-sew prints for folks to sew in the Greenhouse, but feel free to come and crochet or knit a toy, as well. Cut-and-sew kits are great beginner sewing projects, so please do bring your friends!
Send or drop off handmade toys at the Spoonflower HQ: We will also be collecting any handmade toy donations here at Spoonflower's headquarters from now until Saturday, December 5th, at 2pm. You can drop by with your donations Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm if you are in the area, or you can mail finished toys to us.
Please include your name and email address with any toy donations so we can keep you posted as we send over our donation and photos are shared!
Please send all donations to:
Spoonflower
Attn: Greenhouse
2810 Meridian Parkway, Suite 176
Durham, NC 27713
Join the fun and share your softies by using #softiesformirabel and tag @spoonflower in your photos to be featured in an upcoming Softies for Mirabel blog post update!
With customers all over the globe, Spoonflower loves collaborating with our friends overseas but when we have the opportunity to help our North Carolina neighbors, we jump at the chance! This past week, Spoonflower employees came together for an employee sew-in to make blankets for our neighbors at the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service.
[Read more…] about Blankets For Good: Employee Sew-In at the Greenhouse!
This past weekend, our amazing community joined us in the Greenhouse, our craft and community space here at Spoonflower's Durham, NC HQ, to whip up pillowcases for our local chapter of ConKerr Cancer. These lovingly crafted pillowcases will brighten the days of children facing extended stays in local hospitals.
Volunteers in the Greenhouse show off their lovely pillowcases!
In just three hours last Saturday morning, our merry team of volunteer sewists finished 68 bright and beautiful pillowcases! Thank you so much to Pam and Kim, our local chapter organizers, and to everyone who came out to sew for such a great cause! For more photos, check out the Spoonflower Greenhouse Facebook page.
ConKerr Cancer is a national organization that brightens the days of seriously ill children facing extended stays in the hospital by providing them with their own beautifully handmade pillowcases. We are delighted to host a ConKerr Cancer Pillowcase Sew-In in the Spoonflower Greenhouse, our classroom and community space here at our Durham, NC headquarters on Saturday, June 13, from 10am-1pm, and we invite you to join in the effort, no matter where you are!
If you happen to find yourself in Durham on Saturday, June 13, from 10am-1pm, please do join us in the Greenhouse to sew pillowcases for children in local hospitals! Head over to our event page for full details and to RSVP today! We'll provide fabric and notions for folks to create fun pillowcases to donate to our local chapter of ConKerr Cancer!
If you'd like to make pillowcases ahead of time, or if you'd like to organize your own pillowcase sew-in to support local hospitals in your area, follow this quick and easy tutorial provided by ConKerr Cancer. Information about supporting ConKerr Cancer in your area can be found here, along with great resources and instructions for all of the ways you can contribute to such a worthwhile effort. If you're planning an event to support ConKerr Cancer in another area, please do let us know in the comments below. We love sharing fun sewing events with our community!
We look forward to sewing for a great cause with you!
With Nepal suffering its second massive earthquake in a month, we've been asking ourselves something you've probably been wondering too: how can we help? We decided to put our sewing skills to good use in the Greenhouse last week to sew blankets for those in need.
With the help of non-profit organization, Ganga Ghar, we've coordinated efforts to donate our handmade blankets to be distributed to people who need them. You can learn more about what resources are needed by visiting the www.gangaghar.org
A team of stitchers joined us this January for a Greenhouse sew-in to create 200 handprinted and dyed silk scarves for Wrap Your Head Around It, a community art project creating wearable textiles from silks printed with the poems from cancer patients and survivors. Back in October, Wrap Your Head Around It successfully raised over $15,000 in their Kickstarter campaign, and with the help of videographer Brandon Yow, they recently debuted a short film revealing how they linked text with textiles through community action with and for the cancer community. In the film, you'll see how students and volunteer groups from Elon University, Meredith College, and NC A&T University helped along the way to transform this effort into a reality.
Wrap Your Head Around It from theydigitallycreated.us on Vimeo.
The film screening took place at a salon for Wrap Your Head Around It at the FRANK Gallery in Chapel Hill last week. Project leader Peg Gignoux created a rainbow of selected scarves to display, and participants in workshops admired their work and connected with locals new to the project.
Admiring the beautiful scarves created for Wrap Your Head Around It.
Doris Ann and friend admire a rainbow of scarves on display at the FRANK Gallery.
A closeup of the beautiful silks.
We are so honored to have met Peg and her incredible network of activists, artists, organizers and survivors through this project. Check out the incredible Wrap Your Head Around It documentary, and please do pass it along. We hope that projects like this will continue to flourish, bringing beauty and expression to a difficult journey.
It was an unusually cold and snowy week in North Carolina, but there was lots of warmth at the Project Linus Make a Blanket Day.
Sweet little blankets by Spoonflower team member River featuring Teal Antlers by EFOlsen and Pink Charcoal Diamond Fall by Ivie Cloth Co.
The mission of Project Linus is to give a sense of comfort and warmth to children who are seriously ill or traumatized by providing them with a “hug” from a handmade blanket. In just a few short hours, the team of blanketeers made 295 blankets that will go to children in our community. It was delightful to see volunteers from age 5 to 85 working together to sew, knit, and crochet so many beautiful blankets. There were groups of teenagers sitting on the floor to hand tie fleece blankets. More experienced quilters brought their sewing machines and talent to create quilts from the mountain of donated fabric. A tiny, young girl sat on her mother’s lap and carefully guided squares of fabric on the sewing machine to create quilt blocks. As blankets were completed, a blanketeer hand sewed a Project Linus label and attached a poem.
Over 30,000 blankets have been donated since Susie Holmes established the Raleigh, NC chapter of Project Linus in 1996. The blankets are distributed through hospitals, shelters, and social services agencies. Spoonflower is proud to be a part of providing “hugs” to these very precious children.
We love to "sew for good" in the Greenhouse, our classroom and community space here at the Spoonflower HQ, and we are so excited to announce a sew-in to support Quilts for Kids! Quilts for Kids is a national organization that sends patchwork quilts to children in need, donating 30,000 quilts annually. That's a lot of sewing, and we're ready to help!
If you're in the North Carolina Triangle area, please do join us in the Greenhouse to sew quilt tops on Saturday, September 20, from 10am-1pm. Our local chapter will be bringing 100 pre-cut kits to create simple patchwork quilt tops. Our chapter organizer, Bonnie, will take all of our completed tops to quilt with her team of longarm quilters. All ages and all sewing levels are welcome at this event, and you can come when you can and stay as long as you like! Head over to Meetup for full event details and to let us know you're coming!
If you can't make our sew-in, you can still help! Head over to the Quilts for Kids website to find a local chapter, make a donation, request a kit to complete at home, or volunteer.
The generosity of the crafting community never ceases to amaze us, and we can't wait to see you here in September to sew for a great cause!
Thanks so much,
Becca