The Red Yarn Drive collects hats and yarn for a special cause
Calling all knitters! The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association needs your help to celebrate American Heart Month with Little Hats, Big Hearts.
Together with Mended Little Hearts of Utica/Mohawk Valley and Team Matteo Supporting Little Hats, Big Hearts, the American Heart Association presents The Red Yarn Drive. The drive honors babies, parents, and heart-healthy lives in a special way.
The Red Yarn Drive is recruiting crafters to make handmade red hats to be given out to babies during American Heart Month in February. These hats will help empower parents to live heart-healthy lives and to help their children do the same while raising awareness of congenital heart defects. The Red Yarn Drive is accepting donations of finished hats, as well as red yarn to supply the generous volunteers already working hard to carry out the groups’ mission.
Together, these local groups are working to inspire parents to take their family’s heart health to heart while promoting awareness of congenital heart defects. Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect in the country, ranging from holes in the inside walls of the heart or narrowed or leaky valves, to missing, poorly formed, or improperly located blood vessels or heart chambers. Congenital heart defects impact approximately 1 in 100 babies.
The Red Yarn Drive will run through February 2018 when hats will be hand delivered to local hospitals. Red yarn can be dropped in red boxes throughout the community at local businesses, places of worship, and senior living and assisted living communities. Finished hats can be dropped off to the American Heart Association at 125 Business Park Drive, Utica, NY 13502. Hats of all sizes are needed ranging from preemie to infant. Optional patterns can be downloaded at www.heart.org/LittleHatsBigHearts.
The Little Hats, Big Hearts program is presented in connection with The Children’s Heart Foundation.