by Jan Winstead

I met Trudy Hupp last year while visiting her homeroom class to accept a donation for Bundles of Love. Trudy is a teacher at Hopkins North Junior High in Minnetonka where she started a "hat project".

She first saw an article in Redbook entitled "Crochet For a Cause." Included in the article was a photo of an angelic baby in a cute crocheted hat. Trudy carried this article around, checked out websites that were listed in the article and knew that this was something she could do.

As a teacher and homeroom advisor at the junior high school, she was looking for a community service project that ninth graders could get involved in.

She narrowed her search down to Bundles of Love because it fit her criteria of being a local volunteer organization. Next she taught her homeroom partner/teacher the basics of crocheting and another colleague joined in. They gathered supplies, got organized and started each individual hat for the students to complete. This way they only needed to teach the students one type of stitch.

Very quickly, some of the students were ready to move beyond that and learned how to start their own hats and/or were helping more students learn the basic stitch.

The project last year involved three homeroom classes of approximately 45 students, boys and girls. Some of the students handled the advertising, which included taping a commercial and requesting donations of yarn and supplies.

Other students encouraged visitors to the homeroom to learn to crochet and to contribute to the project. They set a goal of completing 50 hats, which they quickly met and extended that to100 hats.

By the time last year's project was wrapped up the kids had made 125 hats! It was at that time that I made a visit to the class to accept the hats on behalf of Bundles of Love.

In the following months, Trudy received donations of crochet hooks and yarn from former knitters and crafters so this year's "hat project" got off to a good start with minimal money investment, but on a smaller scale.

Trudy continues to teach crocheting or knitting to any student in her homeroom; the only price for these lessons is that the student make at least one hat for Bundles of Love.

This year's goal is once again 50 hats, and they are also making booties and may even complete a baby blanket or two.

Meanwhile, Trudy, also mother of two children, always keeps yarn and a crochet hook in her car. She makes good use of her spare time even while waiting for one of her own kids outside basketball or soccer practice. She is modest about her contribution, but I feel her greatest gift is teaching and sharing her talents with the next generation and "future volunteers."

Thank you, Trudy, for sharing your gift and inspiring your students with the "hat project."

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Betty Fiek
Rochester Work Group

by Joanne Larsen

Betty Fiek has been a caretaker throughout her lifetime. She raised a family and worked as a nurse. She joined the Rochester Group of Bundles of Love at the onset and has never wavered from her positive attitude that is so infectious at our meetings.

She is so enthusiastic about Bundles of Love that she tells others about what we do and brings friends to our meetings. She is active in her church and mentioned the work of Bundles of Love to fellow members. As a result, she delivered "a closet full"; of nice fabric to use for the babies.

Betty has mentioned her pleasure in retreating to her sewing room where she is an accomplished seamstress. She starts with cutting out items and sometimes just finished up quilts, bags or whatever we need. She was asked by her church to sew for a woman who needed clothing. She brought this woman right into her sewing room for fitting sessions.

Betty's husband, Harlan, is supportive of Betty and Bundles of Love. They live in their cozy home in Rochester, both retired but willing to make a difference in the lives of other people.

Caring, positive, enthusiastic, dedicated and happy - that's Betty! Thank you, Betty, for all you do.

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by Teresa Wilts

Phyllis Bopp has been sewing for Bundles of Love for about 4 years. For the first two years, she mailed all her contributions—first to Mary Jo's house, and later to mine. After awhile, I realized that Gina Peterson and Phyllis lived very close to each other in Plymouth, and I asked Gina if she would mind picking up Phyllis' donations to save the cost of postage. Gina did one better and picked up Phyllis and her donations and brought both to the north metro work meetings.

Gina, who has been coming to work meetings since October of 1999 with her son, Riley, now (13!), says her favorite thing to work on is designing and cutting quilts. Phyllis says her favorite things to work on are crocheting and sewing quilt tops.

The two make a great team, often coming to work meetings together, where Gina will design quilt tops and cut them out and Phyllis will sew them together. Riley's favorite thing to do at the work meetings is give Lisa C. a hard time. Seriously though, he is our expert snap attacher and next time he ever comes to a meeting, he should be excited to use the new industrial snap press we have for attaching snaps.

I asked Phyllis and Gina to tell us something about themselves that the rest of the group might not know.

Phyllis says she has lived in 5 different states: Louisiana, Virginia, California, Upper State New York, and Minnesota. She works as a Special Education Paraprofessional at Oakwood Elementary School in Plymouth.

For the past two years, she has been involved in making quilts with Mrs. Hullinger's 3rd grade class. This year, Phyllis drew "Sunbonnet Sue" characters on muslin and the kids colored them with fabric crayons to make the quilt blocks. Phyllis then put the quilts together and the kids tied them. The kids spent 3 days working on the quilts and they were gorgeous when they were finished.

Gina did costume design at all of the large local theaters. Her favorite costumes to work on were the ones at the Minnesota Opera. She says she has way too much fabric and ideas of things to do.

When she isn't volunteering she works full-time as an Administrative Assistant, she's a single mom, she reads, gardens, watches movies and "tries to stay sane!"

Phyllis, Gina and Riley, we can't thank you enough for all your help!