Love Quilts Funds:

Love Quilts does not profit from the $3.00 we ask for with each square.  Some stitchers can not send the money with their square due to financial issues and some just don't.  We never say anything to a stitcher who does not mail anything with their square as we don't know what is going on in their lives and we respect that, we are always thankful for their stitching.  So, we usually don't end up with all of the approximately $50.00 we need to finish and send each quilt.  The finishers themselves have picked up the difference in the past.

The squares take many paths before ending up with the child.  The squares are first sent to Joan in Arizona.  Joan then scans the squares and posts them on FOTKI.  She then separates them by child and mails them, once a month, to the finisher of that quilt. 

We have 7 "full time" finishers for Love Quilts.  The squares are mailed from Joan in Arizona to one of the finishers in various states all over the US. This is where the first of the approximately $50.00 is used.  Once the squares are with the finisher the finisher then purchases fabric (6-8 yards per quilt), batting and, if needed, the pillow form for the quilt.  We do try and get the fabric on sale if possible. 

Once the quilt (and pillow if one is being given) is finished we then mail it to the child.  This takes a pretty large chunk of the funds as we mail the quilt so the parents have to sign for it as well as other special safety items (such as tracking) so we know the quilt made it safely.  This also helps if a quilt was to ever get lost in the postal system, we would have a way of tracking it and hopefully finding it.  We have never needed to use the tracking feature with a lost quilt, I hope we never do.  But to be safe we mail it this way and it is very expensive.

Normally there are 30 stitchers signed up for each quilt.  We have never gotten all the promised squares, normally we recieve about 85 to 90% of the promised squares.  Only about 50-60% of the stitchers who finish a square and sent it send the $3.00 with it.  Also, when we make quilts from the any child squares we have to absorb that cost as well as a lot of the stitchers do not send the $3.00 with any "any child" square.  The "any child" quilts or extra quilts account for about 75% of the quilts we send out each year.

We work very hard at keeping track of our funds.  The finishers are required to purchase the items they need and then submit a receipt before funds are given to them.  This way they are getting exactly what they need for each quilt.  The funds are kept track of through out the year and at the end of the year we then go over what was received and what was sent to each finisher.

I hope this helps answer any questions you might have about the LQ funds.

Thanks!  Cathy - LQ founder/coordinator - www.lovequilts.org