Newsletter

November 2025 Blankets Donated 33,204

Hugs & Snuggles Newsletter

Please see our website to view all pictures.

Blankets: In October blanketeers made and donated 351 blankets to our chapter, and the Onondaga County Chapter distributed 200 “Hugs” for children in need, by delivering blankets to Galisano Children’s Hospital, , McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Upstate Pediatric and Adolscent Center

Blanket sizes

Approximate Sizes

Baby / Toddler 36x36, 36x40

Grade School 40x45

Teen 45x50, 50x60 or bigger.

WE NEED : We can use Teen and Grade School, both boy and girl.

Note from Karen

Hi Everyone:

We need to discuss the newsletter… If you don’t get one from me, please check your spam folder. I end up in spam folders quite a bit. It’s probably due to the sheer number of people I am sending to at one time. That or the computers see me going on….blah,blah,blah and thinks it’s just spam. So please check for the newsletter there. I try to have it out by the end of the 2nd week of the month at the latest. Also, pointed out to me, I am sending September’s newsletter in October. I have no idea what to name it. I am doing the numbers for the last month, but sending it out in the month I am in, and including lots of notes for months ahead. It’s confusing. So next year, I am going to number them. The first one – which will probably be in February – since December’s comes out later in the month as I finish all my yearly paperwork, - anyway February (which has January’s numbers) will probably be Edition 1., March Edition 2… and we will see how many number’s I use, how many times I combine months, etc. For now, just go with it. This is November’s and December will have all the year end information and pick-up dates for January. So check those Spam Folders

This newsletter is later than I wanted but 351 sitting on my porch is DAUNTING. So I had process them all and get them out of the way FIRST. Next month the Newsletter will come late as I like finishing my year end paperwork and give all the numbers in that newsletter. So hang on, it will eventually come out.

Please do not attach notes to the blankets with pins. Please use tape, scotch, painters, masking. They all work well enough, just to hold the note.

New drop-off site: We have a new drop-off site, Sew What? CNY. Sew What? Is located in Auburn at 25 Seminary St, 315-282-7277. Their hours are Wednesday and Thursday 10am-70pm, Friday and Saturday 10am-3pm. Their website is www.sewwhatcny.org. They carry yarn, material, notions with a large selection of buttons. The items donated leftovers from unfinished projects, too much purchased etc. If you have a stash of yarn or material your understand. It is a neat shop where you can find some great buys. They also accept donations of material and yarn, notions etc. Check their website for a full list.

Events:

Manlius Library – blanket top day

Our Manlius sew day was a lot of fun as usual. We made about 12 tops and some sewers turned in blanket tops from kits they took home. See pictures on our event page. One of the blanketeers finished our pixel snowman pattern. It came out great.

Our next sew day is January 3rd 1-4pm at the Manlius library. The library has 5 machines for use (please sign up with them), I have 5 machines (1 spoken for usually). You can always bring your own. I provide kits already cut. I am hoping in my down time in December to cut lots of ½ square triangles to change things up a bit.

Blanket Pick Ups: I should be driving the Silver Ford Escape. But just incase the other vehicle is a gold Chevy Equinox.

If you know you cannot be there close to the hour and will be closer to the half hour or 45 minutes – please let me know. If you are at an appointment I will gladly wait. But if I sit there for a half hour and no one shows, I will be leaving.

After November pickups – please hold your blankets until January

November Pick-ups:

Baldwinsville Library – Wednesday November 19th – 11am

Preble- Kaleidoscope Quilts – 6271 Little York Lake Rd – Friday November 21st -11am

Clay Joann’s Parking lot – Monday November 24th – 11am

Fayetteville Joann’s Parking lot - Wednesday November 26th , – 11am

No Pick ups in December

January Pick-ups:

Clay – Joann’s Parking lot – Friday, January 9th 11am

Fayetteville – Joann’s Parking lot – Tuesday, January 13th 11am

Baldwinsville Library – Wednesday January 14th 11am

Preble – Kaleidoscope Quilts – 6271 Little York Lake Rd – Friday January 16th -11am

BOM – Blanket of the Month - please see our website for pictures under Blanket of the Month page, under the Newsletter tab

Susan Holloway – 1930’s Repoduction Heart, Triangle flowers - I love the purple and black

Ruth Norton – Colored Squares – love when I see a color block blanket finished. Purple Squared – love the elongated square

Karen S – Grey Highlights – love how the grey sets off the pinks

Valerie Knoop – Rainbow Bright – the brightness of these colors made me smile

Rebecca Jeffery – Friends in the Dell - Love the bunnies

Virginia Collinson – Brights – Love the wavy quilting in a standout color

P’s and Q’s of Cortland – Sweet Dreams – love the sleeping Zebra - Butterfly Wings - great colors and kids love butterflies – Wild horses – my picture does not do justice to this great teen blanket. The horses are awesome.

Tricia Pepe – Dyno-Myte – I love Dynosaurs. They make great boy quilts.

Deb DuVaul – Electricity - again my picture does not do justice to the colors of this quilt

Linda Smallwood – Pink&Grey - I just love the color combination of Pink/Grey, and you can almost feel how soft this blanket is in the picture.

Peterboro – Perryville Methodist Church – Elephant Parade - Love the elephants - Turtle Crossing – the smiley face on the turtle is so happy.

Elizabeth Nguyen – “Patriots” love how big this fleece sewn blanket is. Great teen size.

Carmen Denny – Baby Elephant – love the squares of elephants

Susan Lewis – Deep blue Sea - I love ripple afghans.

Trinity Episcopal Church – Watertown – Zap - great teen comic book inspired blanket – Hearts – another great double layer fleece sewn blanket

Blanketeers for this month. Thank you to the following Blanketeers for donating blankets .

**If we met in the very late October or the beginning of November, your name will appear next month. I was trying to keep tract of what I had already counted*****

Anon Bonnie Blake Virginia Collinson Cindy Crandall

Carmen Denny Celeste Dunne Deb DuVaul Susan Holloway

Rebecca Jeffery Gail Keller Val’s Creations – Valerie Knoop Susan Lewis

Julie Litteer Elizabeth Nguyen Ruth Norton P’s & Q’s Cortland United Presbyterian Church

Barbara Parr Mary Ellen Pasternack Trish Pepe Petersboro-Perryville United Methodist Church

Gail Renninger Karen S Linda Smallwood Kimberly Sweetser

Pat Thayer Candy Thorp Trinity Episcopal Church / Watertown

Quilt tops, Fleece, Material, Hats, Mittens, Scarf …etc Thank you for quilt tops, pillow cases, fleece, material, hats, mittens ….etc

***Note: While processing blankets this month, I am not sure I kept very good track of those who turned in hats, etc. I seem to have more bags of hats etc, than names. Sorry!! I was overwhelmed****

P’s & Q’s Cortland United Presbyterian Church Mary Ellen Pasternak Carmen Denny

Carol Kolodziejski Ciane Pasinski Vicki Lieberman Pat Thayer

Our drop off sites: Please check with our drop off sites for current hours of operation. All of our sites are wonderfully supportive of us and we thank them for their support.

When dropping off blankets please put them in a plastic bag with Project Linus on the outside and a note inside with your name.

Baldwinsville Library – 33 E Genesee St, Baldwinsville

Manlius Library – 1 Arkie Albanese Ave , Manlius

Calico Gals – 3906 New Court Ave – Syracuse

Sew What? CNY – 25 Seminary St, Auburn.

Oliver's Originals – 8188 Cazenovia Rd Manlius

Kaleidoscope of Quilts – 6271 Little York Lake Rd – Little York(Cortland County)

The Quilt Shop – 1625 State St Watertown,

Karen Lathrop – 245 Martin St – Syracuse NY

Sponsors:

I want to thank our great sponsors whose dollars help me to buy fabric, muslin, markers and yarn.

Stewarts Dairies

Luv Handlz Frozen Yogurt – James St

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September 2025 Blankets Donated 33,004

Hugs & Snuggles Newsletter

Please see our website to view all pictures.

Project Linus Onondaga County NY

Blankets: In September blanketeers made and donated 134 blankets and the Onondaga County Chapter distributed 256 “Hugs” for children in need, by delivering blankets to Access of CNY, Children’s Home of Jefferson County, Kara Foundation, McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center, Nappi Wellness, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Upstate Pediatric and Adolscent Center

Meaning for for the 3rd quarter of this year 455 blankets were made and donated and 631 were give to children in need.

Blanket sizes

Approximate Sizes

Baby / Toddler 36x36, 36x40

Grade School 40x45

Teen 45x50, 50x60 or bigger.

WE NEED : We can use baby and Teen.

Note from Karen

Hi Everyone:

Fall is finally here today. YES!!!! I have been waiting. I might put my summer clothes away later and get out my fall / winter. I have been busy labeling blankets but have been taking time to sew blanket tops to fleece also. It’s an extremely satisfying change for me. Makes me feel like I may have actually created something. I actually did create a Halloween quilt this month and have it pinned to fleece for backing, so I am on a roll.

I am also getting ready for our Christmas deliveries. Yesterday I went and got a 2nd storage unit, so that I can start staging our deliveries for Christmas. Right now I have been pulling all my autumn theme blankets out and put them in the unit, so that I can deliver those this month. I also put the totes of hats, mittens and scarfs in them.

On the home front my sidewalk was finally poured yesterday, so I am almost back to normal from the sewer pipe breaking. I need to redo the landscaping and it will probably wait until spring. I might just order a load of dirt this year and see how much it settles over the winter. Ugh.

We can still use baby blankets and teen, both boy and girl. I again ran out of baby for a week this month. Can you remember back 15 years ago, after I took the chapter over, when I used to say, no more baby blankets please? Now I can’t get enough.

I am still looking for drop-off sites, and I promise to really concentrate on it this month. Some of you may have heard that Calico Gals is up for sale, so I have no clue if they will still be a drop-off site, and this month Finger Lakes Fabrics closes. But one thing I do want to mention about our retail drop-off sites. Please, please, please be kind to the workers. If you have never worked retail, it’s a thankless job. During college and for a little time after, I worked retail. My last retail was So-Fro Fabrics in Penn Can mall. Eons ago. It’s long days for low pay. The last thing any of the workers need is a lot of questions about Project Linus. They know blankets get dropped off , but they do not sit and count them. They have no idea of the numbers coming and going or the name of the blanketeers doing the dropping off. If you need answers to questions about Project Linus – contact me. I am the person you need to speak to, I have the answers. I share them here monthly. The workers don’t have a clue, - they don’t need to. I have said it before this year, when given the chance to be kind, please do so.

108in wide backing: For the quilters : I have sold 30 yards of the 108 inch wide backing. I have updated the website to reflect what I still have in stock. If this works out I will do it again. If you missed last’s month letter. I bought 60 yards of 108in backing. The description follows. One is called Tilt a whirl and one is called Blended. The tilt a whirl has a swirl in it and the Blended is a tone on tone. I will be selling this fabric for what I paid for it plus shipping. It works out to 6.70 a yard. Or $10.05 for 1 ½ yards. I am told if you take a 1 ½ yards and slice it down the length you will have two 54x54 inch pieces to back two blankets. The kicker to this is, you must use this for Project Linus blankets. I am trying hard to keep our costs for blanket making down. When they have other sales I could do the same thing. I would buy the bulk yardage with our funds from fund raising and then sell it for what I bought it for, so that I am replenishing the money so I can buy more. This backing fabric will be our first trial run. You can see the 10 colors of each bundle listed on our website. At the top of the newsletter page there will be a new link to our MATERIAL FOR SALE page. It is first come, first serve. When it's gone I can contact them and see if they still have any or see what I can buy it for then. Any questions or comments feel free to reach out to me.

Finally – I know many of you are getting ready to do your Christmas sewing, But I have lots of blanket tops and fleece that need to be made into blankets. If after your holiday sewing, you just want an easy project, contact me and I will give you a bag of 3-4 tops (unless you tell me more) and fleece and you can finish them and get them back to me after the New Year.

Events:

Manlius Library – blanket top day

Our next Manlius sewing day is Saturday November 1st from 1-4pm. . We are attempting to get on schedule where we will do them every other month. Think about bringing your machine and joining us. We always have kits of fabric all made up.

Kaleidoscope of Quilts in Preble is having their Annual Bolt sale Saturday 10/11/2025 from 10-3pm

Candlelight Quilt Guild’s Quilt Show is October 18th and 19th at Van Buren Elementary School 20 Ford St Baldwinsville 10am-4pm.

Blanket Pick Ups: I should be driving the Silver Ford Escape. But just incase the other vehicle is a gold Chevy Equinox.

After November pickups – please hold your blankets until January

October Pick-ups:

Clay Joann’s Parking lot – Friday -October 17th August 22nd – 11am

Fayetteville Joann’s Parking lot - Wednesday October 22, – 11am

Preble (the new Cortland) Kaleidoscope Quilts – 6271 Little York Lake Rd – Friday October 24th -11am

Baldwinsville Library – Monday October 27th – 11am

November Pick-ups:

Baldwinsville Library – Wednesday November 19th – 11am

Preble- Kaleidoscope Quilts – 6271 Little York Lake Rd – Friday November 21st -11am

Clay Joann’s Parking lot – Monday November 24th – 11am

Fayetteville Joann’s Parking lot - Wednesday November 26th , – 11am

BOM – Blanket of the Month - please see our website for pictures under Blanket of the Month page, under the Newsletter tab

Virginia Collinson – Tye Dye Stars – Love the big stars in this

Deb DuVaul – Arr ! Blast ye Pirate - Love the anchors that break up the darkness of the pirate print

Tami Smith – Ombre – The colors graduate so nicely

Candlelight Quilt Guild – Halloween – Such a great blanket for this time of year

Karen Schneider – Stars & Stripes - I always hang onto a couple of patriotic blankets to have on hand just incase we have a child of active duty members.

Sarah LaRue – Mandela - Gorgeous work

Kimberly Sweetser – Jolly Holiday - Christmas blankets are so much fun

Barbara Gaal – In My Neighborhood - there has been construction trucks up and down my street all summer due to repaving of roads.

Ruth Bryan – Blue Chevron - Love Chevron blankets

Melanie Davis – Baby Dinos - So cute and backed with super soft minky

Deborah Grounds – Lady Bug - The lady bug in the corner, such a nice touch.

Diane Long – Owl - I am in awe of the complexity of this afghan.

Blanketeers for this month. Thank you to the following Blanketeers for donating blankets .

Anon Laurie Best Ruth Bryan Candle Light Quilt Guild

Virginia Collinson Cindy Crandall Melanie Davis Deb DuVaul

Barbara Gaal Claire Genett Denise Gillies Deborah Grounds

Rebecca Jeffery Gail Keller Sarah LaRue Susan Lewis

Julie Litteer Diane Long Mara Sapon-Shevin Karen Schneider

Linda Smallwood Tami Smith Kimberly Sweetser Trinity Episcopal Church / Respite Haven – Watertown

Karen Waelder Manlius Sewing Group