Photo Courtesy Stitch Club of Grande Prairie

By Tanner Smith

Community Groups

Stitch Club of Grande Prairie seeking donations to continue its work

Sep 16, 2024 | 2:26 PM

The Stich Club of Grande Prairie has finished its donation haul for the 2024/2025 year and will begin distributing its knitted items.

This year, 6,502 items will be distributed to 39 organizations across the Peace region, after 24,505 “hours of love “were put in by the Stitch Club.

The 39 community organizations receiving a donation include:

• Babies’s Best Start
• Beaverlodge Christmas Hamper & Food Bank
• Beaverlodge Hospital
• Canadian Mental Health (Willow Place)
• Canadian Red Cross
• Caribou Child & Youth Centre
• Central Peace Health
• Coats for Kids
• Elders Caring Shelter
• Emerald Gardens
• Friends of the Grande Spirit Foundation
• Golden Age Centre
• GP Care Center
• GP Friendship Centre
• GP Hospital (Cancer Clinic, Neo-Natal Unit, Pediatrics, Psychiatric Ward White Rose Program)
• GP Palliative Care Society
• GP Youth Emergency Shelter Society
• Hythe & District Pioneer Homes Foundation
• Lakeview, McKenzie Place
• Mustard Seed Society
• Northreach Society
• Oasis Fellowship
• Odyssey House
• Pearson Place
• Pioneer Lodge-GP
• Prairie Lakes Seniors Community
• Pregnancy Care
• Rising Above
• Ronald McDonald House
• Salvation Army
• Society for Support to Pregnant & Parenting Teens
• St. Lawrence Center
• Wapiti House
• Wild Rose Manor
  Photo Courtesy Stitch Club of Grande Prairie

Club president Anne Sawchuk said; “We’ve had a few new members this year, and it was their first time that they’ve ever seen the display live, and they come and they they sit there and they look and they go ‘I made that one, and I made that one, and I made that one, and I made that one’ so they can see their work.”

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Sawchuk added that one of their members takes the bus to meet with the club, and says she often sees many bus riders wearing their hats and scarves.

Photo Courtesy Stitch Club of Grande Prairie

The club, which consists of 53 mainly retired women up to the age of 96, take great pride in their work but have also bonded over a common interest and built friendships.

“It’s a very tight-knit community and we’re very happy with the members, there such a wonderful group of ladies.”

Sawchuk said, “It keeps them busy, it keeps the people coming from all the lodges and stuff occupied and happy. Even the ones who can no longer knit due to arthritis still want to help, so they’re the ones who untangle the yarn (donations) when they come in.”

Photo Courtesy Stitch Club of Grande Prairie

However, the club is in desperate need of yarn.

Sawchuk says they currently have 10,320 balls of yarn left which will only last one more year; “If we don’t get any donations to replenish what we have, we haven’t gotten any money to buy, (more yarn). We have a few hundred dollars in the bank but that goes to buying the bags that bag stuff up to go out of here.”

“So. if we don’t get any more donations then we will not be here next year because there will be no yarn.”

Anyone wanting to make a cash or yarn donation can either contact Sawchuk at 780-505-2252 or vice-president Cindy Wendorf at 780-897-2338, drop off at the Golden Age Centre, or use their bottle donation number 2280 at the bottle depots inside the City.

Cash, yarn and gift card donations are accepted, but Sawchuk asks if anyone is going to donate a gift card, it is to Micheal’s, as Visa gift cards take a fee off the top.