By AUBRIE GEORGE | The Moorestown Sun
Students at Moorestown High School are using skills they learned in a crafts class in order to make a donation to a good cause.
Recently, 11 students in Barbara Amon’s creative craft class worked to complete the second of two blankets that they are making for needy children through Project Linus.
Since the beginning of January, students have been working on crocheting and knitting squares for the two blankets. All of the squares for the blankets have been made in school during a 40-minute class period, Amon said.
Each student has been required to make a minimum of two squares for the blankets. The students help to put the blankets together and Amon will do the finishing touches before they are donated.
Amon said the students in her class have learned how to crochet, knit, embroider, cross-stitch, needlepoint, hand sew and quilt. To do this project, they are using skills they learned in crocheting and knitting.
This is the second year Amon has carried out this initiative for Project Linus and the second year the crafts class has been in operation.
Amon said she started the project because it was a way to do something valuable with the squares students create while learning about knitting and crocheting.
“I wanted to do something worthwhile with them,” Amon said. “I heard about Project Linus and I thought that’d be a wonderful idea because it was going to a good cause and the students wouldn’t be doing it for nothing.”
Amon said it is up to Project Linus to decide where the blankets are going to be distributed.
By having the students donate their work to a local charity, Amon said it teaches them at least two important lessons.
“It’s teaching them to do things for other people, not just for themselves, in addition to teaching them the skills to create projects for themselves with handy crafts,” Amos said. “These are old-time skills and if they’re not re-taught they’re going to be a lost art. Knitting and crocheting have made a comeback and have become more popular over the last 10 or so years.”
Project Linus is a volunteer organization with a goal to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to seriously ill, traumatized or needy children. The organization does so by collecting new, handmade blankets and afghans, according to the organization’s Web site.
The organization operates through hundred of local chapters throughout the U.S. All of the blankets that are donated are made by volunteers.
Since 1995, Project Linus has distributed more than 3 million blankets to children in need, according to the organization’s Web site.
For more information about Project Linus, visit www.projectlinus.org.
