Donating donation quilts

A group of us from Thursday patchwork had a field trip yesterday! Actually we just followed Mrs. Furui around to places she is familiar with but to the rest of us are unknown...

Mrs. Furui started doing volunteer work at a university hospital (I would say local, but to me it was an hour and a half drive to get there). She makes little things out of cloth or paper for the children's part of the hospital and that included doing some patchwork for hospital walls.

Mrs. Furui also got involved with the Ronald McDonald House across from the hospital and she and I have been trying to equip the house with large quilts for the beds. We had made 4 quilts and still had 9 to go. And then Lorraine showed up with quite a few lap quilts from Australia that could be donated to the Ronald McDonald House so Mrs. Furui planned to take those and two more bed quilts that she and I had just finished. She invited me along (Ronald McDonald House staff have written me thank you notes but I'd never been there myself). Mrs. Ochiai and Mrs. Yamaguchi wanted to see the facilities too and it ended up that four of us made the trip (in four separate cars) and arranged to meet at a vegetable market near the hospital. I will skip the story about how I got lost and wandered around the countryside for nearly half an hour...

Here we are enjoying gelato in front of the vegetable market. I don't know what Mrs. Furui was finding so funny...

And this is the sign in front of the Ronald McDonald House. You will notice that in Japan it is called DONALD McDonald. It is the same thing, but I suppose it is because the R sound is difficult to pronounce that the name is different.

The Tochigi Prefecture Ronald McDonald House has a whole floor of a building with 7 bedrooms plus a community living area and kitchen. The facility is run by volunteers and depends on donations for basic things like shampoo, coffee, flowers, books etc. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of this international organization but they provide housing for families who have loved ones in the hospital.

Here we are lugging quilts in to the Ronald McDonald House.

The staff gave us a tour of the House. This is the kitchen and eating area.

And here is the living room area with one of the quilts that Lorraine had brought a few months ago already on the sofa.

Each room is designated by an animal rather than a number and someone had made these cute fabric door plates to match the room animals. Of course I chose to photograph the door of the "cat" room.


And here is a picture taken from one of the rooms of the university hospital across the street.

We spread out the quilts that we had brought to donate. Two more bed quilts and six more beauties from Lorraine's quilting group in Australia.

And a formal picture of the quilts being received.

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The next stop was the hospital itself where the applique quilt was donated and we were given the honors of hanging. Um... I'm not sure I like the picture of my big rear-end but since I'm the tallest of my friends... I got the hanging job.

I can imagine family members standing by this bench and fingering the quilting or smiling at the colors while waiting for their child's treatments.

A last look at the applique quilt through the hospital doors.