Kintyre Living quilt show weaves support for HopeStreet Dubbo
At their first quilt show, the Macquarie Sewcialites showed their skills and immense generosity.
Scroll to Explore
01 December 2023
News
| Retirement Living, HopeStreet
For the last five years, the Macquarie Sewcialites have met and sewn each week at BaptistCare Kintyre Living, but they’ve never hosted their own quilt and craft show.
Until now!
Like all great ideas, when the thread was pulled the workings of a perfect plan started to unravel and the sewers decided it was time to hold their inaugural show.
And so began the hard work.
Di Cullen, one of the Sewcialites and resident at Kintyre Living, said the quilters worked for months to prepare their pieces.
“We had to do a lot of sewing,” she said. “Some members were sewing solidly for four to five months before the show to get the quilts ready to put on show or to go in the raffle.”
“We were really excited to be able to show how talented our members are and give them a chance to show off their work."
From the early planning stages, the Macquarie Sewcialites wanted to harness the show to raise money for the Dubbo community.
Di said it was the obvious choice to work with BaptistCare Hope Street Dubbo.
“With Christmas coming and people doing it tough in Dubbo right now, we knew we wanted to partner with HopeStreet to help them feed people and families over the Christmas period,” she said.
“We didn’t really set a target for how much we wanted to raise but were hoping for a couple of thousand, we knew every dollar would help.”
The quilt show exceeded that amount, in fact, it quadrupled it, with the Sewcialites raising $8,500!
A figure that Kristine Holland, Manager at HopeStreet Dubbo, said was surprising if not a bit overwhelming.
“There’s a photo that exists of me crying when I read the cheque,” she said, “only that is not for public consumption!”
The donation will stay in the Dubbo and wider community helping the HopeStreet team increase the variety of emergency relief they provide.
“We can increase the nutritional value in our food hampers and strengthen our outreach programs for the new year for those who cannot come to us,” Kirstine said.
“Kintyre have also set up a giving tree for Christmas with the goods being donated to support our community members," Kristine said.
"I hope this is the start of a strong friendship where we can mutually support each other.”
It’s a wonderful example of the many elements of BaptistCare coming together to support each other and their wider community.
The Macquarie Sewcialites are still sewing, even if the pace is a little bit slower as we hit the end of the year, and are planning on replicating their quilt show every couple of years.
You can learn more about the work our HopeStreet teams do in NSW or finding your nearest HopeStreet centre on our website.