The Painted Turtle Camp

A couple of years ago, the American Sewing Guild chose The Painted Turtle Camp for our national project. ASG members across the U.S. made 4,241 turtle pillows to be given to the seriously ill children who attend the camp. The original post can be found here. A few months ago, a wildfire damaged the camp and it had to be closed for the summer. It is in the process of making repairs and is in need of more turtle pillows. I pulled out my pattern, searched through my fabric stash and got busy sewing more turtle pillows for the campers. I love it when I have exactly what I need. I get to destash and help out a worthwhile cause.

The face is embroidered so that the pillows will be safe for the little campers. The pillows will be stuffed later by the camp as they are needed.

By the way, did you know that September is National Sewing Month? What are you sewing to celebrate?

The Painted Turtle

My neighborhood group of the American Sewing Guild met this week and made turtle pillows to be donated to The Painted Turtle Camp, a camp for children with life-threatening and chronic illnesses. The camp is sponsored by Paul Newman as part of his Hole in the Wall Gang Camps. This is the 2011 National Community Service Project for ASG.

The pattern is provided by ASG for members. The turtles will be stuffed when they arrive at the camp and given to the children who attend the camp.  

The eyes were digitized by  LindeeGEmbroidery, downloaded, and machine embroidered on the turtles.


Since there is a shortage of pillows in colors suitable for boys, we chose colors with that in mind. This is a picture of our turtles ready to be shipped to The Painted Turtle Camp.

A label template was provided by ASG  to iron on the back of the turtle. After checking the prices of printable fabric sheets, I decided to experiment with printing my own fabric. I cut a piece of  Wonder-Under Fusible Web to 8 1/2 by 11 inches. I fused this to white cotton fabric which was about the weight of Kona Cotton. I trimmed the fabric the size of the Wonder Under. So now I have an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of printable fabric. It ran very smoothly through my printer. (Don't tell my husband!) I cut out the labels and ironed them to the back of the turtles.