I am so excited to be able to say, “it’s that time of year again!” as we get ready to kick off our 2022 Hogs for Heroes fundraising event. I’m sure most of you know that we are partnered with the organization, Hogs for Heroes as a fun way to give back to our WI veterans. I am so proud of the fact that currently, we have raised over $32,000 between private donations and our 2021 “American Quilter’s Stitch Along” fundraiser event! I want to say thank you to everyone who contributed so far, we could never have done it without you!

The amount we’ve already raised in honor of Hogs for Heroes is truly amazing. Your generous donations and hard work makes me feel inspired to do even more, which is why I’m so ready to get this year’s event rolling! For 2022 we’re going to try something a little different. We had a lot of success back in January when we did our LIVE online Holiday Décor clearance sale auction, so I decided to try something similar for Hogs for Heroes. We have several awesome items we will be auctioning off online, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to Hogs for Heroes. Sounds fun, right? Let me tell you how it works.

Starting today at 2PM CST, April 21st, 2022 through May 1st, 2022 we will be auctioning off an item or two per day on my “Stitch Lisa Bongean” YouTube channel to help raise funds for Hogs for Heroes. Auction items will be posted as a video on “Stitch with Lisa Bongean” for 24 hours. Bidding opens once the item is posted. After 24 hours bidding will close and the highest bidder wins the item. Once the official winner is determined, we will alert them via YouTube chat feed under that particular item. Winners then need to contact the store to provide shipping and payment information (shipping fees will be applied). Once payment is received, we will ship out the item to the winner. We will be doing a complete wrap up tentatively May 19th, 2022 when we will present the check to Hogs for Heroes. Pretty simple!

HOW TO BID:

Bidding will be 100% online by commenting on YouTube. Each auction item will have a correlating video posted on my “Stitch with Lisa Bongean” YouTube channel. New items will post daily. You must place your bid in the comment section for the item you would like to win. Once bidding is closed after 24 hours, the highest bidder wins the item. Please keep in mind that bids posted anywhere else will not be considered!!!

Since today marks the first official day of this exciting event, I am going to start the bidding off with two special quilts that I personally designed for this great cause. As much as I love and will miss these quilts, I’m more than willing to let them go if it means contributing more to Hogs for Heroes. I am honored to do it! Because I’m hoping for a generous donation resulting from these precious works of art, I’m starting the bidding off at $100 for each. I am also making an exception to the rules and keeping bidding for these two quilts open for the entire auction week (bidding on all other items ends 24 hours after they are posted)! Bidding will end on these items at 8AM on May 2nd, 2022. That’s right! I want to drive those bids as high as we can get them, so I’m taking the week to make it happen!

The first quilt up for grabs is an awesome patriotic themed piece, “American Quilter’s Quilt.” I used a seeing star grunge with a hand-sewn striped binding, and a red star print for the backing. Finished size is 67″ x 72″ making it a nice size to display on a rustic table or porch swing. Of course, it’s complete with a sleeve on the back for easy hanging if you want to go that route – and I also promise to add a label to the back before I send it out! I really hope this quilt brings in a chunk, so I’m starting bidding off at $100 on this one. Now it’s up to all of you to see how high we can get the bidding to go! C’mon everyone – let’s show em’ what we’ve got!

The second quilt I have for you today is one you might remember from last year as being a Block of the Month. “Hexies for Heroes” is an EPP quilt, which is all done tediously by hand and then machine quilted. This is a big quilt with a finished size of 88″ x 88″ which makes it perfect as a bed spread or as hanging décor. I want to give a shout out to a couple of  our great customers and friends, Lori T. and Terry S. for generously donating their time and skill to make this quilt for our auction. A ton of work went into making this intricate piece, so I’m starting bids at $100 on this one as well. Please be generous! It’s the least we can do. A pattern for this quilt will be available at the beginning of May if you would like to make one for yourself.

Remember, to bid on these quilts you need to post your bid offers in the comment section on my “Stitch with Lisa Bongean” YouTube channel. BIDS ARE NOT ACCEPTED ANYWHERE ELSE. BIDS POSTED TO THE BLOG OR FACEBOOK PAGE WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. To see current auction items and to place your bids each day, visit “Stitch with Lisa Bongean” by clicking the link below! I am really proud of the great job we did last year raising money for Hogs for Heroes, but I KNOW we can outdo ourselves in 2022. The ball is rolling everyone, now it’s up to all of you!

Make sure you don’t miss out on your opportunity to bid on new items by visiting me at “Stitch with Lisa Bongean” every day to see what’s new and to place your bids! And just a heads up, I came up with another great idea to raise funds for Hogs for Heroes that I will be talking more about in a separate post later today, so keep an eye out for that! We are working on the details but I’ll have more information up for you soon! Until then, happy bidding everyone!