Saturday, November 17, 2012

Sewing Machine Project Volunteer Day

Our Sewing Machine Project volunteer day started just shortly after 8am this morning in the community room of a local church. Louie and I, and Jack and Polly traveled to Madison Friday afternoon to spent the night, so we would be well rested when we started our day.

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Here we are just getting settled in before the volunteers started coming to help us.

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Please click ‘read more’ to finish reading the rest of this post.

There were new machines, modern machines, and vintage machines. There were also sergers.

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Please forgive all the photos of me. My husband was manning the camera. Confused smilemadison 011

I preferred working on the old vintage machines as those are what I am most comfortable working on.

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Louie and Jack worked on sewing machines, and were also ‘runners’, taking machines away and getting more to work on. They did an awesome job of checking over the machines.  Now that I know Louie did such an awesome job on the machines he worked on, I can put him to work with me when I am working on them at home…. Winking smile (if I can get away with it.)

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My silly brother Jack made a face at me when he saw the camera. What a goof! Jack has been working on sewing machines for awhile now, and longer than Louie, but then, he is a ‘Jack of all trades’ and can fix just about anything.

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This is Margaret Jankowski, founder of the Sewing Machine Project, and Polly, (Jack’s wife).  I don’t know why I couldn’t get decent lighting on these two pictures.

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Margaret and Polly were in charge of inventorying, tagging, and data entry of the finished machines before they moved to the next destination…the truck, or the storage room.

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Louie was particularly interested in working on this machine. It is a Pfaff 360. He was interested because we just bought one off Craigslist a week or so ago, and we haven’t worked on it yet. Now he has experience so he can work on mine! Rolling on the floor laughing

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We had a lot of wonderful volunteers. Not everyone worked on machines. There were lots of tasks that needed to be done, and everyone did it with a smile.

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I think there were over 70 sewing machines on this truck when were were finished for the day.

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There were also a few sergers. Many more sewing machines were tested and put in another storage area. Over 125 machines were worked on, and inventoried today. We had 25-30 volunteers. A reporter from the Wisconsin State Journal came and took pictures. Here is HIS story.

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We cleaned up our mess, put everything away, and called it a day about 5 pm.

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….and we felt SEW blessed to have been a part of this wonderful day. Smile We can’t wait for the next one!

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12 comments:

  1. How neat Michelle! What a great way to spend a Saturday, helping others! Neat to read that there were plenty of volunteers too (I'm sure a few more could have been used, but great to see that high of a number!)

    awesome work!

    betty

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  2. What wonderful work you and your team do ,so many people will be blessed .

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  3. what a neat thing to be part of!! I would love to use my skills to help others in that way! God Bless you for your willingness to do for others! :)

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  4. Thank you, Ann. You are a no-reply blogger, so I couldn't email you back. If you want to get involved, find something that you love, then find people that share your love, and need your help. Blessing to you, Michelle

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  5. What a great day and good work to help others. Have a restful Sunday!

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  6. What a great way to give thanks for what you already have, by cleaning up machines for someone else. Great job!

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  7. What an awesome project! I feel good reading about it, and I know you must feel 10 times better because you are a part of it! You are on my hero list!!

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  8. Hi Michelle, Really enjoyed reading about your sewing machine volunteer day. You guys are fantastic people for doing this work to help so many others. Bravo.. very well done, you truly are sew blessed!

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  9. Wonderful post Michelle!! and so many people/volunteers to help too. that is fantastic...

    what a sense of accomplishment to see all of the machines finished and ready for use.

    You know, I still sub at my old school for my coworker at bit and every time I help them with their sewing, I say "you should practice at home...do you have access to a machine?" ...almost always they say "NO"...parents, grands and neighbors just do not sew like they used to when I was growing up..

    So, you can see how I know this project is wonderful now.

    HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you and your family!

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  10. That is amazing! So many people are going to be so happy with those machines. This is a very giving and loving act of kindness.

    Have a wonderful and Blessed day
    Kristie

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  11. Looks like it was a good day and what a wonderful think you're doing. Louie and your brother look like experts!

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