Needle and ThREAD

Stitching for Literacy Update 2

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funk-and-weber-wildThe Wild About Reading bookmark pattern from Funk & Weber Designs. Available at The Needlework Show beginning tomorrow.

The EGA National Seminar is going on in Pittsburgh, PA, right now. Colleen Leader from Loose Thread Stitchers gave a presentation to the EGA board over the weekend. Included in that presentation was the Needle and Thread: Stitching for Literacy program and annual Bookmark Challenge.

Good news
Colleen is organizing an outreach program between twenty EGA chapters and twenty Girl Scout troops. Members of the participating chapters will stitch a bookmark for each girl in their partner Girl Scout troop. In addition, each girl in participating troops will receive materials and instruction to make her own bookmark. And finally, each chapter and troop will visit an independent shop together to explore all the materials, projects, and events available in the wonderful world of embroidery.

How fun is that?!

More Good News
Oh, yes. There’s more. The board also committed to participating in the 2010 Bookmark Challenge as part of their national outreach program. That means they’ll encourage all chapters to participate. Colleen, knowing my goal for 2010 is (make that was) 2010 bookmarks, went so far as to get them to commit to producing 1050 bookmarks.

So I’m changing my 2010 goal. I am no longer aiming for 2,010 bookmarks to be made and donated to libraries next spring. Rather, I am aiming for 4,000 bookmarks to be stitched (it’s our fourth year)–including the ones we teach new, future, and non-stitchers to stitch.

That’s right, I’m going to include the bookmarks adults and kids stitch for themselves during Challenge outreach programs. So, in the case of the EGA/Girl Scout partnership, each girl will receive a bookmark stitched by an EGA member, plus she’ll stitch one of her own. That will count as two bookmarks toward our total goal.

Got it?

Now we stitchers don’t have to stitch all the bookmarks ourselves; we can recruit others to stitch for us!

What do you think?

Categories: Needle and ThREAD

5 replies »

  1. I LOVE it! 4,000 is completely do-able. Just think of the lives we will touch with this program, I am adding this to the WWSR ~ World Wide Stitching Rave post I will be making later today on the LTS blog. 2010 is the year of counted thread, Let’s make our voices heard!

  3. Let me know what I can do to help promote this cause! I blogged about it last year and have posted about it in my forum. I would be very willing to design some simple bookmarks or to do whatever else I can to help.