More quilts and word from Egypt

I promised I would show you the quilts that Carol brought with her yesterday - at least the ones I have photos of.  This first top was made by Sue S  (don't you live those tiny log cabins!)  and was quilted by Carol's daughter Fiona - her first ever attempt at quilting!  and she stippled it!  Wish the quilting showed up better - it is great!  

 Sue S also made this quilt top and once again it was quilted by one of Carol's daughters - this time by  Kirsten and if you look carefully she even quilted a heart on the coffee mug!  Excellent work girls - maybe we have a new generation of quilters in the making!

This quilt top was completed by Andrea - a huge disappearing nine patch and was quilted by Carol.  

 Finally we have a lovely top by Carol's friend, Linda.  We loved the stripes on this one and in order to make it a bit more Aussie to be used as a WWQ Carol added the Southern Cross before she quilted it. This is a great example of a simple quilt that looks really striking because of the pleasing combination of colours.  It is a perfect quilt for the soldiers, but even more than that it is going to also be a standby quilt for our Wounded Warriors. 

The next two quilts come from Shannn's Army.  If you would like to make quilts for kids for a good cause this is the place the send them.   Why don't you check it out.

Both of these quilts will be heading to Egypt.  

We still need more quilts for Egypt if anyone can spare the time.  

And talking of Egypt...

The Following is an email I received this morning from someone who has received one of our quilts and who will now be our point of contact.  I am not sharing the entire content for reasons that will become apparent in coming weeks.  I thought you would enjoy the rest of it though.

We work on a rotation system, half will go home in August with new people coming to replace us. We have a couple of members who do 12 month stays while the others do an offset six monthly rotation.  So while at present there is 18 boys and 7 girls, this will change in August. We are however slightly embarrassed at you sending another 23 quilts, but I’m sure they will be greatly appreciated.

We have looked at your website, and even passed it onto a couple of family quilters we have at home. So maybe you will have a couple of new members soon. We were sad to hear that you often don’t get thankyou’s, our Commanding Officer when he saw the quilts was very impressed.  It is above and beyond the usual care packages we receive.

Part of my role here is as the postmaster for our Post Office, it’s amazing the look on soldiers faces when you have mail for them. While some families seem to send regular packages some members in the 3 months I’ve been here have received no mail at all. The care packages take on a whole new prospective for these members.

Oh my goodness can you imagine being away from home for months at a time and not receiving any mail!  When I was in the RAAF and the RAN, as long as I was living on base I checked the mail pigeon holes every day hoping there would be mail and thankfully I got plenty because my folks were into letter writing.  I am making plans right now to ensure that at least in Egypt everyone gets some mail.  More info on that in future posts but if you would be interested in being part of that leave a comment.  I am not thinking of anything that is particularly demanding on your time or budget.

Back to the business of sending quilts to Egypt - I now have the personal address for the Postmaster of the post office so we can now address our parcels direct to her rather than to "A Soldier, Sailor or Airman."  Please contact me if you have a quilt to go and would like the new address.

Till next time...................keep spreading the word and happy stitching.