Sewing With Nancy

Project Linus is not new to Sewing with Nancy viewers. Many of you have donated blankets to this national organization that has provided nearly five million blankets to children who are in crisis. They've now added a new venture encouraging volunteers to stitch weighted blankets which helps create a calming effect for children with sensory disorders. I'd like you to welcome Mary Balagna who is from the national headquarters of Project Linus. Mary, welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you for having me. Mary Balagna, excuse me for mispronouncing your name. The most important thing we have to talk about is this weighted blanket. What a wonderful process. Tell me about the blanket. Well, this is an example of a weighted blanket. It's very heavy. It's used for children, who for some reason who have a problem processing their stimulation from outside influences, whether it be sight, or sound or lights, or smells, or whatever. For some reason, they have a problem being able to sort that out and calm themselves down. For some reason, unbeknownst to science I'm sure there's something behind it now that's been discovered but children have been found to take blankets and place them on top of themselves one after another, after another even putting a hand or a leg in between the mattress and box spring to try and get some deep pressure. That deep pressure produces a calming effect. And this blanket for which you have the instructions on your website is designed. It's very unique and it's heavy. It's made in channels, as you can see. You found, you told me recently that you don't send them weighted. We don't. We just send the outside shell. Actually, it's weighted with bed sheets twin sized sheets is what we've used here. But it's really important to remember that every child is different. Every child is a different size so it has to be tailored to that particular child. You tailor them with the use of twin sheets. The top sheet is very simple to fold. When you told me about this on the phone I thought you'd cut these into sections and roll them. But you fold, and fold, and fold. Just fold in half, and just keep doing it. Eventually, you get this size. If you're wondering how this is going to work there's hook and loop tape on two ends. It's hard. It's hard, but that's a good thing because we don't want it to come open easily. It sometimes helps to kind of roll it a little bit. Sure. Just to facilitate getting it in the channel. Then, when it's in there, you can put your arm in there and just open it up. It's very easy to do that. As you can see, it takes up the whole channel. It's kind of hard here because we're not flat on a table. But once it goes in, we just Velcro-- Hook and loop tape, Velcro, any other type of closure. Right, we make sure that it's closed. It can easily be removed for washing, or whatever. I can see the weight. You know, little babies are swaddled. This gives kind of the same type of thought. It does. To make these outer blankets you don't want them too powerful in color or design. Exactly. We need to be careful, especially on the back side. We don't want them to be too stimulating in color. So what we do is, this one is a solid. This is a tone on tone. The front side, many children-- you know, this little boy the one that this particular blanket is going to is a soccer fan so this is why it was made with soccer fabric. We try and do the best we can when we hear about a need. Maybe somebody will say this is for a little girl she likes princesses or she's a fan of Winnie the Pooh. We do our best. We can't always accommodate, but sometimes it's nice to personalize them a little bit and give that child their very own blanket. But the requests are pretty daunting, which is unfortunate. There's Autism, and Cerebral Palsy, and ADHD and ADD, different disorders that produce this sensory problem is really where the weighted blanket seems to be most beneficial. We've had just a tremendous outpouring of help but the need is never met as with everything, unfortunately. Sure, but as people who sew and stitch and work with fabric we can help in this manner by making the outer cover for a weighted blanket and donating them to the local chapter of Project Linus, a non-profit organization. Yes, and we have many people-- We offer the pattern on the website. There are people who just need to make them for family for friends. We're happy to give that pattern out. We have, actually, two different patterns. One is made with a solid fabric by our coordinator in Joplin, Missouri. She originally came up with it, Joyce Gentzler. Then our national assistant, Cheryl Hughes came up with this pattern. Just two different ideas, depending on your expertise. Well, Mary, thank you for sharing this with us. What a wonderful project fitting a need. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And thank you for being with us on Sewing with Nancy for our two-part series on "Sew Knits with Confidence." I hope you've enjoyed this and regained confidence if you've sewn with knits before or that you'll be able to try it if you haven't. Go to nancyzieman.com for more information on our Nancy's Corner guest more streaming video programs, Facebook and social media. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now.