Giving Back:
What Sewers Do Best

Retailers Help Their Communities with Baby Lock Charity Programs

As a general rule, quilters and sewers have a bold sense of style, a love of beautiful colors and fabrics, and unlimited reserves of creativity. But more than this, they are known for their huge hearts and compassionate spirits. Through the development of a variety of programs, Baby Lock has tapped into these selfless characteristics and provided ways for Baby Lock retailers, sewers and quilters to use their talents to help others.

“Our dealers have the ability to engage in and interact with local communities in very personal ways,” said Kristi Humes, senior vice president of marketing, Baby Lock. “They are the heart and soul of Baby Lock, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to connect with sewers and quilters in ways that truly reach out to them.”

In 2004, Baby Lock developed the Building Quilts for Love and Sewn In Love programs that allow volunteers to sew something for people in need. Baby Lock offers each of these programs to its independent dealers, helping them organize the programs around events in their areas, such as quilt festivals and sewing retreats. Once an event is scheduled, Baby Lock helps coordinate the event from beginning to end. On the Baby Lock retailer site all Baby Lock dealers with access to press releases, imaging and forms they can easily customize Sewn In Love and Building Quilts for Love events to specific locations and audiences.

At a Building Quilts for Love event, participants sew and serge quilts which are later given to a local charity of the sponsor dealer’s choice. Sewn In Love events are similar, but instead of making quilts, participants learn the art of sewing on paper, creating patriotic postcards to send to Walter Reed Medical Center. All events are open to the public, regardless of the participants’ levels of sewing experience.

Recently, Daines Cotton Shops experienced a Building Quilts for Love event firsthand. A local Salt Lake City Baby Lock retailer, Daines sponsored a Building Quilts for Love event in conjunction with a Nancy Zieman Love of Sewing retreat on November 9-10, 2007.

“Building Quilts for Love allowed us to engage people who might not ordinarily have wanted to try sewing,” said Terry Daines of Daines Cotton Shops. “They were attracted by the idea of helping others, and were able to try something new in the process.”

At Daines’ Building Quilts for Love event, blankets were created, then donated to children in need of a little extra love and care at Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

Also, Baby Lock is working with Today’s Creative Home Arts to offer sewers all over the country a way to participate in a Sewn In Love event for the holidays. Participants can go online to find instructions, then sew a postcard for the soldiers in Walter Reed Medical Center. After they create a postcard, they add a pre-paid phone card so that recipients can contact their families while away from home.

Because of the generosity of sewers, other successful events in 2007 included Building Quilts for Love sponsored by Jackman’s Fabrics in St. Louis, MO, Calico Country Fabrics in Paducah, KY, Sally Cheney’s Superstore in Nashville, TN, and with Sewn In Love sponsored by 35th Avenue Sewn and Vac in Phoenix, AZ, among many others.

And in 2007, in addition to Building Quilts for Love and Sewn In Love, Baby Lock developed the Feather Boa Project. After Eleanor Burns joined Baby Lock as the Quilter’s Dream Series spokesperson, the company began to realize just how much quilters enjoyed the vibrancy of her personality -- and her feather boas. So Baby Lock combined style with philanthropy, creating this new event.

At sewing and quilting events, Baby Lock now sells purple feather boas for $5, allowing buyers to feel like divas à la Eleanor Burns. But the fun doesn’t stop there. All proceeds from the Feather Boa Project go to a local charity. At the Houston International Quilt Festival this year, the charity of choice was the Houston Area Women’s Center, an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. And at the Quilting Around Chautauqua Festival in New York in September, sewers and quilters were buying boas by the dozens, all for the benefit of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

With these programs in place, Baby Lock offers something for all sewers and crafters to not only enhance their love of sewing, but to give back to their communities as well. Experienced seamstresses work alongside sewers new to the craft, sharing knowledge, skills and ideas. The event brings them together, uniting them in an artistic endeavor.

For Baby Lock, the choice is clear: an objective other than the bottom line unites both employees and customers in a common goal -- a charitable cause. Whether it’s Building Quilts for Love, Sewn in Love, or the Feather Boa Project, each has a way of bringing people together, all for the love of sewing.

Baby Lock – a major underwriter of the popular PBS television show Sewing With Nancy starring national sewing authority Nancy Zieman – offers a full line of products that enhances the love of sewing, including technically advanced sewing machines, sergers, embroidery products and exclusive software. Call 1-800-298-8810 to find out how to become a Baby Lock retailer.

Reprinted from SQE Professional, January 2008