Giving back with Crafty Cats

Since spring 2010, Georgia College has had a crafting club for knitting and crocheting called Crafty Cats.

Senior English literature major Jessica Burgett, senior creative writing major Emily Brischler and senior environmental science major Hannah Sadowski shared the same interest in crafting and decided to create a Registered Student Organization for it.

The club was approved by SGA in 2010 and began meeting regularly on Mondays at 5:30 p.m. in room 306 of the Student Activities Center. The club’s faculty adviser, Liz Havey, attends most of the meetings and works together with the other participants.

The club’s founders began with a Facebook group and talked about it with people online to initiate interest and get more members. Now, Crafty Cats has more than 40 members in the online group.

“Crafty Cats is an opportunity for us to get together once a week and knit or crochet to relieve stress and also try to do something beneficial for the community,” Craft Cats President Jessica Burgett said.

Crafty Cats has already completed a few projects since the club’s beginning. After having contacted the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Milledgeville, they started their first project: scarves for soldiers overseas.

“One of our projects was making scarves for overseas soldiers, which we worked on with one of the local churches in Milledgeville,” Vice President of the Crafty Cats Emily Brishler said. “They gave us the yarn, and we made the scarves. We made about six scarves total.”

Now the club is currently working on its second project: baby hats to be donated to the Oconee Regional Medical Center for the holidays. Service hours are offered to the students for working in the club.

“Next semester we plan to collaborate with The GIVE Center in order to offer service hours for charity projects,” Burgett said.

Although the club was only recently established, the Crafty Cats have already managed to visit a few crafting events: the annual Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta and the Shop Hop Atlanta workshop.

In spring 2012, the Department of Art plans to exhibit the Crafty Cats’ work.

As for now, the Crafty Cats operate on self-funding, but if the club grows next semester, the members will apply for university funding

Crafty Cats also helps its members release the stress of the day. Once a month the Crafty Cats members have a movie night during the regular club meeting, where they watch a movie, talk and relax while doing their work.

“We have movie nights once a month, where we each bring a movie to choose from, and we set up tables and chairs in our room. We each bring something to drink or to eat, and we also bring projects to work on. It’s a lot of fun to hang out for a couple hours and talk, watch the movie, and crochet and/or knit,” Brischle said. “Although the club was mainly created to give back to the community, we have found new friends that share the same enjoyment of knitting and crocheting.”

Posted by DENICA YOTOVA on Dec 1 2011. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.