More than 100 smiles!

It has been a while since I have told you a little bit about what has been going on in ConKerr Cancer Oxford. When we started this chapter few months ago, we had no idea where this was going to take us, and here we are... more than 100 pillowcases later! It has been an incredible journey!

So far, we have delivered a total of 103 pillowcases, 128 small bags, and 48 Christmas stockings for the children. This was all possible thanks to our volunteers and sponsors. We would not be here without them, so I would like to say a big thank you to all the people that made this possible.

We had our third delivery before Christmas. The nurses asked us to make Christmas stockings, but this time it was not only for the cancer ward, but for all the children at the hospital that had to stay there during Christmas eve. Being at the hospital during Christmas eve can be sad, especially for children, and the nurses wanted to cheer everybody up by giving them a handmade stocking and some little presents that night. We started sewing stockings non-stop for a little bit, and this is some of what we did.



With the stockings, we also delivered 37 pillowcases and 10 small bags for the Hickman lines. We made enough stockings for all the children at the hospital that Christmas Eve.





Most of the pillowcases were made with the fabric donated by Petra. David, the manager from Hobbycraft Bicester also donated some beautiful Christmas fabric and felt for us to use. Lizzet, from The Fabric Loft made a donation of a big bolt of red felt that was used for the stockings (and we still have some left for next year). Thank you, thank you, thank you! Yes, it was a fantastic month full of emotions, snow, and Christmas magic! 

During December, as I posted in the previous entry, Waitrose (our local supermarket) raised some funds for us. A total of £600 were donated few months later. We are so grateful to them for this.

Our fourth delivery was in January after the holidays. This time we focused a bit more on the small bags, as these are very needed at the hospital and they still had some pillowcases left. Therefore, we delivered 9 pillowcases and 25 small bags for the children. The small bags are very popular and they go fast...

With some of the money we got from Waitrose we wanted to buy lots of fabric to organise sewing events, but here the fabric is extremely expensive and some patterns cannot be found, especially the ones for children. I asked Cindy Kerr (founder of ConKerr Cancer) to help us find good deals of fabric in the USA, since one of our volunteers (Sana) was going there in February. Cindy not only helped, but she selected an incredible collection of beautiful fabric that could melt anybody's heart (you will see some of it really soon). Thank you so much Cindy for taking the time of picking up the gorgeous fabric. Sana collected it from Cindy and brought it to the UK. The result... a suitcase full of 24kg of fabric. British Airways allowed us to carry the suitcase for free since it was all going to the charity. Thank you very much to British Airways and to Sana for making this possible!

Meanwhile we were making pillowcases, and we delivered 18 pillowcases and 38 small bags in March, reaching more than 100 pillowcases.



I feel blessed! This has been an incredible journey surrounded by amazing people. THANK YOU!

Amazing Waitrose!

Have you heard of the Community Matters program at Waitrose?

The branch in Headington donates 1000 pounds distributed between three local charities. At the checkout, the clients receive a green token, which is placed in the box of the charities they would like to support. The more tokens a charity gets, the bigger the donation they receive.

Guess what?? ConKerr cancer Oxford was selected as one of the charities for the month of December 2010.

We are extremely happy and grateful for this!! And, towards the 20th December it was going quite well, don't you think??

It seems 600 pounds will go to conKerr cancer Oxford. Amazing Waitrose!!! Thank you so much! This was a wonderful Christmas present and will definitely bring many smiles to the children with cancer at the Kamran's ward.

Fundraising with sweetness

We had a cake sale at work, to raise funds for conKerr cancer, to keep on bringing smiles to the children. It was a success! Everything was sold out by the end of the day and we raised a total of £264,63 to buy fabric and material for pillowcases, Christmas stockings, and small bags.





We had several tables allocated for us, so we put some pillowcases around to decorate them, some pictures of the children, and some stockings, to attract people to the stands and give awareness of the charity.









We had a whole range of cakes, cookies, fairy cakes, cupcakes, and muffins, including gluten free cakes.







Thank you very much to all those who baked cakes (Natalie, Stuart, Simon, Sana, Val, Erin, Aymeric, Busi, Sergio, and Sylvia) and helped selling them during the day (Alexandra, Aymeric, Amalia, Sana, Val, Yasmina, Guy, Erin, and Sylvia)!!

Thank you very much as well to those that bought cakes during the day and contributed to fundraise some money. You definitely helped bringing smiles to the children!

More pictures of the cake sale can be found HERE.

Petra, we love you!

Sometimes in life we find amazing people, those that spread love around and melt your heart. Today I want to introduce to you an incredible woman called Petra. Petra is from Germany and she was nine months pregnant when she made 19 pillowcases for our newly created chapter. Before sending them, she decided to fill in a big box with all sorts of beautiful and cheerful fabric. 

We are so very grateful to her that we don't have enough words to express our gratitude. Thank you Petra! Thank you so much! I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened the box. This is really amazing!

The handmade pillowcases on the front and the fabric donated behind them.

We made many pillowcases with the fabric, and there is still plenty for other things for the children such as small bags for the Hickman lines and Christmas stockings for the holiday season to come. More about this coming soon... meanwhile I wanted to share this with you, because Petra really touched my heart. ♥

Second delivery!

We have been busy this past month and finally delivered 24 pillowcases and 28 wiggly bags to the hospital.





Still many more to come...

Thank you Hobbycraft Bicester!!

Hobbycraft Bicester has been sponsoring our chapter in Oxford by donating fabric for making pillowcases and wiggly bags. This time, they also donated a big piece of red felt to make Christmas stockings for the children that happen to be at the hospital during Christmas. 

We would like to thank David, Hobbycraft Bicester's manager, for all his support and his wonderful donations!

Our first delivery!

We just made our first donation to the hospital! A total of 15 pillowcases and 27 small bags were delivered for the children. A little one named Lilly was the first to choose her pillowcase, a cheerful one with colourful animals! By the end of the afternoon all the children were able to pick their own pillowcase and put some colour into the hospital rooms.