Wrap A Smile Quilts

  During our extended pause in Wrap-A-Smile quilt production, we have not forgotten the thousands of children around the world who are waiting….hoping….for the gift of corrective facial surgery when medical missions start again.   The worldwide incidence of cleft lip and cleft palate occurrence is estimated to be 1 in every 700 births.  This number may seem hard to believe as we in the US will rarely see an untreated, or poorly treated, cleft.  But thousands of children around the world are not so lucky.  An untreated cleft leads to malnutrition, speech problems and social isolation.  How amazing that an initial hour and a half surgery, by a volunteer medical team, can truly transform a life.  A new smile by Alliance for Smiles in Myanmar Rotaplast International and Alliance for Smiles , the two organizations who receive most of our WAS quilts, have recently posted updates on their websites: https://rotaplast.org/2021/06/rotaplast-covid-update-j...

 Ready! Set! GO!   Why firsts?   I, Paige, am posting my first blog post ever.  And I had a delightful weekend in Maine on my first official trip as Wrap a Smile’s Northeast coordinator.  Not only did I get to meet three of the hundreds of quilters that contribute to WAS, I picked up 31 colorful quilts and felt a sense of joy as “normal” peaked her head out and smiled!  Promising my husband we’d seek out some yummy dinners along the way, we headed to Unity, Maine and met Ellen S., a member of the Liberated Yo-Yos, the Bar Harbor guild. She drove down with her husband to bring me 17 lovely quilts.  The guys talked lobstering and we chatted about sewing and reconstructing family heirloom quilts.   Ellen and I with quilts by the Liberated Yo-Yos Meandering our way East, we ended up in Boothbay Harbor and met with Colleen G. and I got a tour of her sewing room.  (And my husband was able to see that long arm quilting machines do fit in craft rooms!) ...