Quilts ready for Operation Cover Up expo

August 1st, 2013

Nearly three months of work making quilts for Moldovan orphans has culminated in an extravaganza of colour to brighten the lives of 16 cold children next winter.

Up to 12 women associated with the Motueka craft-sharing group Crafty Tarts have helped during weekly working bees to produce the quilts, which will be on show at the Operation Cover Up expo on Monday.

The quilts and other winter clothing, bedware and toys are destined for orphaned children struggling with daily life in some eastern European countries.

Operation Cover Up has been a long-running project run in Motueka by Faith Wells as part of a New Zealand-wide effort through Mission Without Borders, a Christian charity.

The many thousands of products created by individuals, schools and community groups will be displayed again at the open day on Monday August 5th from 10am to 2pm at St Thomas' Anglican Church auditorium. (See our story from last year's event.)

The items are then packed and sent to Nelson, then on to Christchurch to be combined with items from the South Island into a container ship bound for Holland. The North Island does likewise.

They end up in orphanages in Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. Faith says these institutions look after 10,000 children in Moldova, 80,000 in Romania and 100,000 in Ukraine, all of whom were orphaned following civil wars and persecution in their countries and have to survive bleak winters with little warm clothing.

The Crafty Tarts quilts were made from a backing of polar fleece, lined with old wool blankets, and topped with creative and colourful decorated quilting using pieces of fabric that some had stashed away for many years, or donated from other people's old stashes. These squares were then joined together and bordered into blanket sizes.

An early shortage of polar fleece was advertised in the local paper and the group's co-ordinator Val Armstrong was staggered by the response from as far afield as Stoke.

Sadly, unless someone can step in to take responsibility for organising the open day exhibition at St Thomas', this may be the last such expo in Motueka. Faith decided last year to finish her nine-year stint as organiser, but her replacement was unable to take over for other reasons.

Faith says that although the garments and blankets will still be made and gathered, in future they will be shipped directly to the Christchurch collection point rather than assembled for display.

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