Knit for Good Causes and Charities
The Warm Up America Foundation Welcomes Support from Knitters
Feb 28, 2007
Many knitters combine their passion for the craft with knitting for charity or good causes. There are many charities and good causes in the US and internationally who welcome knitted items which they can put to excellent use to help others.
Information on charities and good causes which take knitted items can be found within this Suite101 article, and a quick internet search will throw up many other charitable organizations which will be delighted to hear from you.
Warm Up America!
One very large charity which is dedicated to providing knitted and crocheted items to people in need is the 'Warm Up America!' Foundation. Since it was founded in the early 1990’s the supporters of the charity have knitted and crocheted over 12,000,000 7 x 9 inch rectangles, which have been formed into hundreds of thousands of aghans! If these rectangles were laid end to end they would stretch for over 1700 miles!
'Warm Up America!' supplies afghans to charitable organizations and agencies who then hand these out to homeless and needy persons. As well as distributing the finished afghans, the Foundation is committed to motivating, training and coordinating volunteers to knit and crochet afghans and clothing for people in need. The Foundation achieves this through getting more involved with schools and youth groups, as well as community and church organizations.
The 'Warm Up America!' website contains a lot of information about their aims and goals, as well as free patterns for crocheting and knitting rectangles and hints and tips for the sewing up and finishing of the completed afghan. The free knitting patterns at 'Warm Up America!' can be found here.
Tips for getting involved:
- When knitting or crocheting a sample piece to test your tension or gauge, why not aim to make it 7 x 9 inches and donate these to 'Warm Up America!' ?
- The 'Warm Up America!' website contains some interesting stitch information, when looking to practice new stitches perhaps follow their instructions and pass on your finished squares, you’ll be both learning something new and helping others!
- Get children involved! When you are next feeling like a challenge how about teaching some youngsters how to knit or crochet and get them to practice their new found skills making rectangles. These are great ways for youngsters to learn as they are fairly quick to complete and without any shaping or fancy stitchery required.
- Using the tips given in this Suite101 article, recycle yarn from discarded pieces of knitting and donate the yarn to 'Warm Up America!' for use to make rectangles.
