Attention, Quilters! Wrap-A-Smile has big news to share!

Ready! Set! GO! I have exciting news to share! As Rotaplast continues to be “on hold” (and 1,000 quilts made by you are still waiting in San Francisco) and I have collected about 50 quilts from various New England quilters during the pandemic, I decided to find a way to share these quilts NOW to make some children smile!

First, I obtained each quilter or guild’s permission to find homes for their creations and then I began looking for someplace that children could be blessed and encouraged by a homemade quilt. Ascentria Care Alliance (Ascentria.org) and their partner, Welcome Neighborhood Settlement Teams (welcomeMST.org) responded quickly and enthusiastically to my emails. They work together to welcome, support and house evacuated Afghan families as they settle into their new lives in New England. With more than 50 families, they are helping 200 Afghan children now and expect more families to arrive in the next month.

This was a terrific development but I was in a quandary as I only had 50 or so quilts available. But this brings me to my second piece of exciting news! Wrap-A-Smile is partnering with Quilts Beyond Borders to provide 250 quilts so that each evacuated Afghan child has a handmade quilt welcoming them to New England! Quilts Beyond Borders is a charity that provides quilts to children in underserved areas of the world. (Quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com). I have the privilege of picking up the quilts from QBB this week and delivering them to Ascentria and WelcomeNST soon. I will post photos when I can. Meanwhile, I am posting photos of some of the quilts that will be delivered soon.

This new partnership means we are ready to dust off those sewing machines and children’s fabrics and get to work. Keep your eyes open for a post within the week if you are ready to start sewing for this new joint effort with Wrap-A-Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders! Wrap-A-Smile will continue to receive and catalog your donations of quilted love. However, we will provide more updated details about fabrics, battings, sizes, labels and more importantly, introduce Comfort Cases, a charity that we can support as we wait for Rotaplast to put out the call again for more quilts.

-Paige