Break the Mold Meeting Minutes

Break the Mold

Hello and welcome to our first Break the Mold newsletter of sorts. First things first here is a quick reminder of what this project is about:

We are looking to start a non-profit organization that will provide a scholarship to a female student involved with the arts and her community to pursue her education after high school. Included with this scholarship would be a makeover night that would feature make-up, hair, photos (and much more).

We want to thank everyone who has offered to help and hope you will all tell your friends about this great project. Please email back with any email addresses you would like to add to the distribution list!! (I will keep the emails short and sweet when I can :)

On Saturday 06/26/2010 Jessica hosted a meeting at her apartment to discuss the project; Melissa, Kat, Carol, Rhonda, and Sam attended. Below is a rundown on what we discussed:

Website-We want to start the website ASAP. Jessica has a friend who will start developing a website for us, Melissa will contact her friend at godaddy.com to secure a domain name, Kat & Rhonda will play around with logo design and color schemes. We would like to also link a blog and facebook to the site. Ideas were discussed about making sure the site is girly but no cliche as well as user friendly. Melissa will start a Google Doc to start ideas for the information on the site, Carol will help edit.

Tax Status-Jessica has the details on becoming an official charity, 501(3)(c). She will file the paperwork to secure the name first, the remaining paperwork requires a $400 payment. We have a donor who has offered to pay that in August. Carol will check with Free Arts of Arizona to see if we can become a charity under their umbrella.

Donations-Sam will check with local banks to see where we should begin our account. Once we have the name and bank account we will be able to start asking for donations more aggressively. We are going to look for business to sponsor the scholarship, in return they will receive free advertising on our website and at all events.

Scholarship Criteria-We discussed opening the scholarship up to all females but the group is still considering that option. For now we have tentatively decided to open the scholarship to female high school seniors in the Phoenix Metro Area.

Scholarship-The group has decided to not make prom a focus of the scholarship. The ideas so far are that we will have a cash scholarship of $500-$2000 for the winner (we will see in December/January what our funds are like), a makeover for your new college look or graduation night (Amber Pope may be able to donate hairstyling), a personal photo shoot & artwork portfolio shoot (Rhonda Lewis will donate photo services). We discussed the idea of having a big event for the 10 finalists (an art show event where we charge a nominal fee for friends & family) where the winner is announced at the end.

Fundraiser-The idea of a craft show, food tasting event, raffle/silent auction, or rummage sale were brought up as a way to advertise and raise funds. All members of the group will be looking for areas to host a possible event and we can contact once we have set up our charity status.

That's all I can remember for now folks . . . look for another email in the next little while once I have set up the Google Doc and to discuss our next online or in person meeting.

Let's make it happen!

Lissa

Punk Rock Pillows

 Punk Rock Pillows

A Craft Tutorial brought to you by Melississippi of the Phoenix United Crafters Society

Crafter Difficulty Level: Sewing = Easy, Crafting = Hard

Materials: Sewing machine, needle & thread, pins, 10 or so T-shirts, pillow or stuffing, ruler, fabric pencil

Introduction: I think this craft will appeal to anyone who was into going to concerts (shows as we called them back in the day) and buying band T-shirts. The shirts themselves were only like $10-$20, but the nostalgia associated with them makes them priceless. Eventually though, you outgrow the shirt, or it gets old, ripped, etc-but you still can't throw it out! I realized my husband and I had a box of say 20 or more T-shirts that we were never going to wear again, but couldn't bear to part with. Inspired by the work of Boo Davis and her Quiltsryche Quilts I attempted a smaller project, a pillow. The making of this pillow included shirts from Melississippi's collection: Limp, Before Braille, At.The.Drive.In, The Get up Kids, Reel Big Fish, and Jimmy Eat World. And Tom's collection: The Bouncing Souls, Number Two, Filter, and Sonic Youth.

Step 1: Cut down your T-shirts.

(This step may be the hardest, not in the difficulty level, but because these shirts always made you feel like a bad mamma jamma walking around high school. I mean, wearing this T-shirt to school the next day means you went to the show last night, that was something!) Anyways, back to the cutting. First, I rough cut the shirts to get rid of the collar and sleeves etc, just into a big square or rectangle.

Step 2: Iron the squares & rectangles

Always iron on the backside of the fabric (not the logo!). First iron them flat, then using your ruler iron them into nice neat squares and rectangles. Try and leave 1 to 2 inches around the logo.

Step 3: Pin together pieces and sew, and then repeat, repeat, repeat.

I planned for my pillow to have all the pieces sort of tetris-ed together, I didn't want all the patches the same size. So I would attach 2 together, sew, then attach another, sew, and kept going until my fabric was long enough (hold it up to the pillow you are trying to cover to measure.) I did two shirts across, then kept adding to the bottom until I had a long piece of fabric.

Step 4: Clean up the back

You will probably have a lot of extra fabric and thread on the back, cut as close to your seam as possible so your pillow won't be lumpy!

Step 5: Sew up two sides

Turn your fabric inside out and fold it in half. Make sure it is even and lined up and then pin one side together. I first measured and marked it with my ruler and fabric pencil. Sew together that side then repeat for the other side. Turn the pillow right side out to check that it is the right size, then turn it back inside out to cut off the excess fabric (except for the top, leave an inch or two of the excess there.)

Step 6: Insert pillow and hand sew the top up.

Once your pillow is inside, try and fold over the edges and hold or pin together and sew together a clean edge.

Step 7: Lay on the pillow and rock out with your headphones like you're 16 again!

this weekend in pictures

Let's go away for awhile, you and I

A little home movie of our adventure to Tucson to get away for Memorial Day