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Arlington Heights woman creates quilts to fundraise

For many people, fundraising means setting up tables or booths throughout the community to sell baked goods or handmade trinkets.

For retired Arlington Heights District 25 teacher Lisa Krupiarz, it sometimes means constructing a 75-inch- by-75-inch T-shirt quilt.

Krupiarz, 63, of Arlington Heights, who retired from Thomas Middle School in June 2015 after teaching Family and Consumer Sciences for 12 years, has had an innate interest in sewing since she was a middle schooler.

After her daughter's boyfriend's mother asked her if she could make a T-shirt quilt years ago, she was hooked. She ended up turning her hobby into a side business.

However, Krupiarz also uses her sewing as a way to give back to communities and organizations that interest her. During a fundraising event for Arlington Heights Elementary District 25, she had her eighth-grade sewing class create a T-shirt quilt.

“I collected T-shirts from Thomas and South Middle School, and we continued to do this because it was a great filler activity to do collectively as a class project, and we would use them for fundraising purposes within the district,” she said.

Since then, she saw how fundraising T-shirt quilts was something she could use for various organizations.

Her latest quilt project involves the Edward W. Thompson American Legion Post No. 49 in South Haven, Michigan. Krupiarz is in the process of moving to the community. She and her husband, Bob, became post members to support the post in dealing with an $140,000 debt from a $350,000 retaining wall project, called the Veterans Memorial Wall, which was completed in June 2011.

“We're on a hill and the hill started to sink and it was pretty bad. It was within a few feet of our building,” said club manager Heather Hahn.

“The message that I learned is that even people like myself, who are kind of opposed to military anything, are all needed,” Krupiarz said. “The veterans have such a hard time. They come back and they're so disjointed from our culture after they've served in the military. All of us able-minded and bodied citizens need to support our veterans any way we can.”

Liz Aubrey at the post helped Krupiarz throughout the process, collecting T-shirts for her and giving her insight to what was happening at the post in South Haven as the quilt was being constructed.

The quilt is “so representative of the individual lives of the people that pass through the Legion,” Krupiarz said.

The T-shirts came from parents with children in the military, patriotically meaningful destinations throughout the country, the Wounded Warrior Project and Veterans of Foreign Wars, and people who donated T-shirts from other American Legion Posts.

“It's patriotic, and the border is red, white and blue, but it's a flip-flop print because (South Haven) is a beach community,” Krupiarz said.

The quilt, which took a couple of years to complete, is being raffled off Aug. 19. The goal is to sell 500 tickets at $10 each, with proceeds offsetting the wall debt. Tickets went on sale two weeks ago and can be purchased at the post or by calling (269) 637-6817.

“Any help we get is appreciated,” Hahn said. “The symbolism of the quilt — that veterans and family members have donated shirts and she put all of it in one quilt — means a lot.”

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