Here are the February 2012 Quilt-A-Month Club challenges! Embrace them, or ignore them, it’s up to you.
Sign up information, complete explanation, and important dates are all on the Quilt-A-Month Club page. We always have room for more club members!
Theme Challenge
Birds
Color/Fabric Challenge
Wool
Design/Technique Challenge
Applique
Future club members, here’s that page again: Quilt-A-Month Club!
1. Like our page. http://www.facebook.com/AAQI.News That means our updates will wind up on your wall. Friends who visit your wall will see that you support us.
2. Share AAQI status updates. That sends our message to your friends. (They don’t have to visit the AAQI FaceBook page.
3. Every time you make a Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilt, update your status with a picture and a statement like this: “I’m making this quilt to donate to the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative.” As the quilt grows, share pictures.
4. Update your status when your quilt is assigned a number, when it
moves from the Waiting For Assignment to the auction page, or to the Quilts For Sale page. (Hint, hint!) Include a link to your quilt in every update. Here’s the formula; XXXX is your quilt’s four-digit number:
http://www.AlzQuilts.org/XXXX.html
5. Every time you BUY a Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilt, update your status. Include a picture, a link, and a thank you to the maker.
6. Are you a member of the $1,000 Promise? Are you a Quilt-A-Month Club member? Every time your dollar amount changes or you earn another badge, update your status on FaceBook. Tell why you are passionate about our cause.
7. Pick the quilt you think will earn the most money during AAQI monthly auctions. Include a link to that quilt so your friends can bid and prove you right. At the end of the auction share the total amount raised for the AAQI.
8. If you have lost someone to Alzheimer’s remember them on their birthday (or any day you want) with a photograph. Link to the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative home page so your friends will know you support us: www.AlzQuilts.org
9. ”Like” AAQI status updates.
10. Comment on AAQI status updates.
BONUS: Include the link to this blog post on your status update.
Love Endures All Things: A Journey with Alzheimer’s is a small book that will fill your heart. It is beautifully written and illustrated by Ginda Ayd Simpson. She writes about her father and his struggles with Alzheimer’s. It is a book every caregiver will appreciate.
“I learned to cherish the memories of the man that Dad was and to respect and love the man he had become. I learned that no matter how much we may want to do so, we cannot pull an Alzheimer’s patient back into our world. We must hold their hand and enter into their new reality…”
Ginda has graciously given the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative 13 copies of Love Endures All Things. They are available for purchase on our website while they last. The entire purchase price of $16 will go to our mission of raising awareness and funding research.
Thank you, Ginda!
Here are the January 2012 Quilt-A-Month Club challenges! Embrace them, or ignore them, it’s up to you.
Sign up information, complete explanation, and important dates are all on the Quilt-A-Month Club page. We always have room for more club members!
Theme Challenge
Liquid
Color/Fabric Challenge
Vintage fabric
Design/Technique Challenge
Variegated thread
Future club members, here’s that page again: Quilt-A-Month Club!
On Monday volunteers from the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) presented a check for $30,000 to Dr. Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova at the Life Sciences Institute of the University of Michigan. Dr. Garneau-Tsodikova and her research team will be using the money raised predominantly through the sale of donated quilts to develop multifunctional drugs for Alzheimer’s disease.
Pictured above (from left to right) are: Jacob L. Houghton, Todd J. Eckroat, Wenjing Chen, Keith D. Green, Rebecca A. Reed (kneeling), Joshua J. Bornstein, Dr. Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova, Ami Simms, Pat Holly (kneeling), Sue Nickels, Debbie Chenail, and Ruth Langdon.
It is unusual for researchers and those who fund them to ever meet. AAQI volunteers have had this opportunity three times. It is an extremely rewarding experience.
We bring quilts to explain our mission of raising awareness and funding research through art. Dr Garneau-Tsodikova’s grandmother and aunt have Alzheimer’s. She is motivated by their struggles with AD to work towards a cure.
We also bring Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts to sell. They become tangible reminders of the hope we all share that some day there will be a cure for this horrible disease.
It was truly amazing how science and art came together as Dr. Garneau-Tsodikova explained the work of her research team to quilters Pat Holly and Sue Nickels using a quilt from the AAQI traveling exhibit (“Alzheimer’s Illustrated: From Heartbreak to Hope”) made by Mary Andrews. In the background are exhibit quilts by Mona Fallis and Gay Young Ousley.
For everyone who sews for the AAQI, I know you do so because you care deeply about finding a cure for Alzheimer’s. Let me assure you that what you do matters. Every single stitch counts. Your art touches people in a most special way. Just look at the faces of the people below holding the quilts you made!
Together we CAN make a difference.
To everyone who supports the AAQI by making quilts, buying quilts, and through financial contributions to our nonprofit, please accept my personal and heartfelt thanks for the work you do to make the AAQI a reality.
Together we have raised more than $679,000 since the AAQI began in 2006. This is the 10th research project we have funded.
Thank you!
Ami Simms
Founder & Executive Director
Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative
The numbers are in!
The AAQI sold 1,141 Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts during International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX, raising the most money ever during the four and a half day quilt show.
This was the sixth year the AAQI was invited to display and sell Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts by IQF founder and director Karey Bresenhan. Brooke and John Flynn, from Billings, Montana, again sponsored the booth.
Thank you, quilt makers, quilt buyers, sponsors, and volunteers.
Click here to see a list of all the quilts that sold at IQF Houston.
Click here to see more than 500 quilts for sale. They make great gifts.
Hollis Chatelain Gets Hat Trick — AAQI Gets $17,327.26Hollis Chatelain earned a “hat trick” and the coveted MVP award for “Hollow,” a 16″ x 16″ thread-painted, machine quilted image of a woman’s face. Chatelain’ss quilt raised $2,570 for the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) in the “Stanley Cup Quilt-Off” online auction which ended November 10th. This is the third year in a row her quilt earned top dollar in the charity auction.
Twelve quilters in two teams competed for bragging rights, the highest selling quilt earning its maker the MVP award in this spirited competition between The Feed Dogs (Alex Anderson, Hollis Chatelain, John Flynn, Becky Goldsmith, Renae Haddadin, and Sue Nickels) and The Rotary Blades (Caryl Bryer Fallert, Pat Holly, Libby Lehman, Judy Mathieson, Mary Sorensen, and Ricky Tims.
The annual celebrity quilt auction was the most successful online auction in AAQI history raising $14,025 for the nonprofit. A Viewer’s Choice component to the “Stanley Cup Quilt-Off” was also offered at the International Quilt Festival in Houston and online. Each $1 donation to the AAQI was counted as one vote, raising an additional $2,277.26 overall. Profits from sales of earrings made with images of each of the 12 auction quilts, brought in $1,025 for a grand total of $17,327.26.
Thank you!
Here are the December 2011 Quilt-A-Month Club challenges! Embrace them, or ignore them, it’s up to you.
Sign up information, complete explanation, and important dates are all on the Quilt-A-Month Club page. We always have room for more club members!
Theme Challenge
Grocery Store
Color/Fabric Challenge
Batik
Design/Technique Challenge
Blanket Stitch
Future club members, here’s that page again: Quilt-A-Month Club!
The Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) now offers Gift Certificates! Create them online in increments of $10 and either hand deliver them, snail mail them, or let the AAQI email them for you. Simple. Fast. Affordable.
AAQI Gift Certificates are perfect if you’d like to buy someone a quilt, but you don’t know which one to give them. They’re also a great way to introduce quilt lovers to our mission of funding research through sales of donated quilts.
Who would love to get an AAQI Gift Certificate?
Any quilter, members of your bee, your secret Santa, hard-to-buy-for family members, guild president, teacher, hair dresser, mail carrier, boss, babysitter, dog walker …
OK, I’ve started the list. Comment to this blog with all your great ideas. (If you’re reading it as an email do NOT hit reply, click the word COMMENT.) I’ve got a crisp $10 bill and I’ll buy an AAQI Gift Certificate for the person who comes up with the best suggestion(s). I’ll pick my winner on December 7th.
Are you in a similarly generous mood and want to reward a great suggestion? Let me know and I’ll set it up!
Ami Simms
Founder & Executive Director
Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative
Help@AlzQuilts.org
(810) 637-5586
Congratulations to JoAn Godfrey. She wins my $10 gift certificate!
Some times you have to drop a hint. Other times you have to drop an anvil. Either way, the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) is here to help with Wish Lists!
We’ve got ‘em and now you can get ‘em. Totally free, easy to set up, and best of all now Santa knows exactly what you’d like for Christmas.
We have more than 600 quilts for sale and every time one sells we raise more money for Alzheimer’s research. It’s a gift that does good. And you’ve been good this year, haven’t you?
Set your Wish List up today and tell your family, add the link in your email signature, put it in your holiday newsletter, or email it to CNN. It’s all good.
Check in tomorrow for another great idea!
Raising Awareness &
Funding Research
Through Art
Visit us at www.AlzQuilts.org
