The Blanket Ladies, Visalia, CA

The Blanket Ladies just donated 100 blankets to the LUSD Healthy Start Family Resource Center to assist them in serving victims of the recent flooding in their area and Woodlake. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

'This the Season!
Last week we stuffed:
100 bears and other plushies
120 cuddles
20 knitted scarves
60+ children hats
Over 100 knitted baby hats for future Kiras
10 Kiras completed
All are ready and packed for delivery!!! 👏👏👏👏

HELLO FALL! Today is the beginning of autumn and we couldn’t be more happy to see a change in the weather after a very hot summer in Tulare County. Speaking of cooler weather, the Blanket Ladies have already started the merry season of making Christmas stockings that will go to children in our communities!

Our ladies were very busy last week, packing 20 Cuddles and 5 Kiras. We sewed 20 more blankets for CASA and added 20 more girl blankets to our stash.
Next week will be the beginning of the Christmas stocking project.
We also welcomed Julie Clark as a seamstress to our group.

Delivering cozy warm blankets and sets to Community Services Employment Training - CSET 💛🙂

Christmas stockings are finished! Thank you to Diane, Charlene, Sandy, and Barbara for finishing and boxing up all the Christmas stockings. Shella has been busy making fleece baby hats and cancer hats, Evelina is serving cuddles and cuddle pluses at home as well as making crocheted baby blankets, Beth is sending a pile of things from Paso Robles (baby blankets, toys, hats), Christine is making knitted scarves, Penny is freehand quilting the panels we had in storage as well as making knitted scarves.

In one day we completed 90 large child blankets and 10 lap blankets, we are getting closer to finishing the large blankets (60 more) then onto the small boy blankets.
In a couple of weeks, we will begin the Christmas stockings.

The girls are two of our "Students" displaying the pieced baby quilt they constructed for the KIRA sets.

This is a picture of our Grant Proposal Cover for the 2021-2022 year. The background is a picture of one of the patchwork quilts made entirely from scrap fleece. The foreground image is quilt was produced by school-age volunteers whose desire was to learn the art of sewing and become productive members of our community. Together the two images symbolize one of the Blanket Ladies tenets: To creatively meet the needs of today while strengthen the sense of community for tomorrow.

We are very grateful to the County Center Rotary Club for the donation of $2500.
THANK YOU!!!

We are "beary" happy!!! We successfully sewed up 100 bears on Thursday!!! 🐻🐻🐻❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

You all have heard the saying, "Christmas in July", well here at the Blanket Ladies we are already busy prepping for the Christmas Season even though the temps may be in the tripe digits.
⛄️160 more Christmas mas stockings have been cut
⛄️29 silky scarves that had been previously serged have been labeled and bagged
⛄️50 big blankets were topstitched and packaged
⛄️Our junior blanket ladies were here today and continued sewing the personal needs bags for House of Hope. 15 are now completed, tagged and bagged
⛄️Many of our ladies continue to work at home serging cuddles, cutting out Christmas stockings, knitting and crocheting, and the endless task of packaging the cuddles

Big thanks to First 5 Tulare County, the Blanket Ladies just received a $12,000 Special Project Grant to purchase fabric, binding, and other supplies to be used by volunteers to make blankets, hats, bibs, etc. for young children to be distributed through the Family Resource Centers, domestic violence shelters, CASA, and other programs serving families.

Thank you very much, Mary Jane Yada and The Blanket Ladies, for all the time and dedication you put in into making these beautiful blankets. Our CASA kids will love them.

The Blanket Ladies, Visalia, CA updated their business hours.

COVID-19 Masks made for essential service workers in the medical fields. In 5 weeks the group spent about 1,000 hours and made nearly 3,000 masks for the local medical community.

The Blanket Ladies, Visalia, CA updated their website address.

In March, the world stopped. And the Blanket Ladies leaped forward. The COVID-19 pandemic caught healthcare providers flat-footed. The need for personal protective equipment exploded as the pandemic surged. A key element to PPE is face masks. Healthcare providers were forced to re-use masks to conserve limited supplies. A way to extend PPE masks' viability was to cover them with a second cloth mask. As soon as the Blanket Ladies became aware of the need, they found a design, fine-tuned it, and began producing masks. Within five weeks the group had collectively spent about 1,000 hours producing nearly 3,000 masks for the local medical community. This is just one way the Blanket Ladies have responded to the immediate needs of the community throughout its 11-year history.

11 years is a long time in the life of a volunteer program. Yet here we are. The Blanket Ladies have not just survived the last 11 years, they have thrived. In 2009, three women came together to fill a basic need for the underserved Tulare County. Today, nearly two dozen women donate thousands of hours to continue to fulfill those goals.

As with any vital organization, The Blanket Ladies' production has morphed into supplying essential goods to an expanding base of local social service organizations. Their products range from hats and scarves for the homeless to soft knit caps for cancer patients to specialized feeding bibs for the developmentally disabled.

All of this is in the addition to their trademark fleece blankets and layette sets. At one time it was mentioned that the annual Blanket Ladies production would cover a football field. After 11 years, the cumulative production would cover a major portion of the College of Sequoias campus. That's fulfilling a whole lot of need.

But this success has to come at a cost. Raw Material prices have risen by over 15%. Heavily used machines are in need of ongoing service and repair. The Blanket Ladies are at a crossroads. If we can't increase donations, we must reduce production. Unfortunately, there has not been a reduction in the need for our products. The COVID-19 pandemic has added additional strain to the Blanket Ladies budget.

Even though JOANN Fabric and Craft Stores generously donated over 150 yards of fabric for the mask project, the Blanket Ladies dug deeply into their fabric inventory as well as their supply of notions such as thread and drawstrings. While the term "notions" seems inconsequential, the reality is that this one unforeseen project significantly impacted this year's supply budget.

In light of the expanding challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, we also realize that this is not the ideal time to be soliciting donations. However, after these health issues subside, life will go on. There will still be a vital need for the goods and services provided by the Blanket Ladies. Your financial assistance to the Blanket Ladies will provide an important component in the rebuilding of a strong local community.

Funding Sources (2009-2019)
Foundations: Visalia Rotary Community Foundation, Bank of the Sierra, Dwelle Family Foundation, MB Price Foundation, Carpender Family Children's Foundation, Costco Regional Foundation, Walmart Foundation, Gannett Foundation/ Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register, Sense Foundation, Central Valley Community Bank

Service Organizations Visalia Breakfast Rotary, Visalia County Center Rotary, Visalia Host Lions Club, Soroptimist International of Visalia, Rotary Club of Visalia, United Way of Tulare County, Visalia Sunset Rotary

Governmental Funding First 5 Tulare County, Tulare County Board of Supervisors Good Works Program, City of Visalia Community Advisory Committee

Businesses Caldwell Barber Shop, Target, Dani Anderson Upholstery, Blain Farming, Buckman-Mitchell, JOANN Fabric and Craft Stores

Schools St. Paul's Leadership Club, St. Mary's Confirmation Class, HEART Visalia

Individuals Ken and Lavada Metzger, Bob and Carol Doyle, Mary Jo and Bo Lichty

Individuals Donating Services Teri Van Huss Accounting

And many more individuals who have donated money, new sewing machines, fabric and yarn.

You can make checks payable to: Parenting Network
Mail to: Barbara Thurber
P.O. BOX 1006, Visalia, CA 93279
For further information please feel free to call Barbara at (559) 732-2798 or (559) 799-7015.

COVID-19 Masks made for essential service workers in the medical fields.