Ground Cover Project!

A few weeks ago I had a friend of mine take me downtown to a 'crafternoon' with a few super amazingly crafty gals and one of the women was working on a blanket for the Phoenix Ground Cover art project. Turns out that one of the other crafters there gets her talent genetically from her mother, Ann Morton.

Ann has created a community project to create a giant blanket made up of smaller blankets and these blankets are made up of 10in x 10in squares that will cover an empty lot in downtown Phoenix. Once the instillation is complete, the cover will be deconstructed  into 300 individual blankets to be given to the homeless of the area.

 Probably the one group in the Phoenix area that actually needs warm, knitted and crocheted blankets.

I love this project for two reasons- we have too many empty dirt lots in Phoenix. Our city continues it's ugly, massive urban sprawl and yet we have SO many of these empty, ugly spaces throughout our city not being utilized. There has been some movement recently to fill these areas with art, public space and 'greening' the city. (The Valley of the Sunflower is a fantastic example of this)
Ann has designed a gorgeous flower pattern for the lot. Check this out...

©Ann Morton

Cool, right?? I love the colors.

Of course the best part is that after this art project has brightening up the lot it will serve a second purpose of helping to care and share a little homemade love with our homeless community. In Phoenix there are around 3,000 people living on the street, and unfortunately it's been on the rise the last few years. This is just a small something that our knitting and crafting community can do to put our skills to good use.

I signed up with a friend of mine and we started this weekend. I've almost finished my first square (I'm dealing with a sick kiddo at the moment so it's taking a little longer than expected) Here it is...

We've got a long way to go but I'm excited to be doing it and it's going to be great to see it completely as well as to see what everyone else is going to do for their individual blankets.

Check out the ground cover site; there is also a Facebook page and a Ravelry group. You don't have to be in Arizona to participate, so pitch in.

What are crafters and artists doing in your community to make a difference? There are so many amazing projects out there- I'd love to hear about them and feel free to post about them here.

Keep on knitting...