The Made Up Initiative - my pledge

Before I retired, I worked with children,  young people and their families. Lots of these young people had developmental problems.  Literacy problems were very common in the group I was involved with. They had often been unrecognised and caused considerable problems. Difficulties were often put down to other,  behavioural,  issues and the literacy issues not tackled.

Karen Ball of Did You Make That,  who is a children's publisher and of course sewing blogger,  is raising money for the National Literacy Trust. I have pledged a donation and hope you will too.

Here is the link to details about the initiative in Karen's own words  http://didyoumakethat.com/2015/08/13/the-made-up-initiative-launches/.
Pledge a donation via the Just Giving page, set a challenge,  big or small,  and if you successfully complete your make by the deadline of 10 September, you’re automatically entered for a prize giveaway worth more than £300. All you have to do is blog about, or email Karen details of your completed project at didyoumakethat[at]fastmail[dot]com. The winner will be randomly picked and the prize includes:

• £50 voucher from The Village Haberdashery
• Copy of the Aster pattern from Colette Patterns
• A place on Tilly and the Button’s Learn To Sew Jersey Topsonline workshop
• All seven paper patterns from Sew Over It (for UK residents. For applicants outside of the UK, the patterns will be provided as PDF downloads.
• Ten sewing books donated by Love Sewing. These will include Learn To Sew with Lauren Guthrie, Alabama Chanin Sewing Patterns, Sew Over It Vintage by Lisa Comfort, Quilt Me by Jane Brockett and Skirt A Day by Nicole Smith.
• with more prizes to come!

If you can't participate in making something in the time scale, just donate some money anyway! It’s for a really good cause.

Karen has started a new Facebook page to show what fellow Made Up Makers are doing, and behind-the-scenes details on how the Initiative is progressing. Just a few days into the initiative,  she has already raised more money than she hoped to raise in the month!  

My self-set challenge is to redo all my blocks for the start of my new pattern cutting course in September. I'm not completely happy with the current ones - garments don't fit as well as they should. We do need to have current and decent blocks for the course. I'd also like to make By Hand London's Victoria blazer as I need a casual and more modern jacket,  but we'll see!