Need suggestions for raffle baskets at guild show

Please email me privately as snipped-for-privacy@speakeasy.net.

Susan

I like the title of "honey basket" but am not sure about the donation from the judge. That might work in the swamp but here in the big city that would be a crime. Last show there was a jar of body chocolate in the chocolate basket. Some gals didn't know what it was. If you don't know, don't ask here in public, just imagine if you smeared chocolate on your body how someone else might remove it.

Susan

Thanks for your suggestions. Since our show in February in Chicago that "Winter Warmer" sounds especially good. I have a flannel quilt without a home right now. Combining that with hot chocolate, mugs, slippers and a book gift certificate would just about fill a basket. Maybe I could present this in a wood box to sit by the fireplace. Oh, the creativity is running. . .

Susan

Hi again Susan! I'm not Pauline, but I have to say that I really enjoy those ticket auctions! It is fun to 'compete' with friends to put the tickets in a favorite basket. Just last month, at the Quilter's Celebration weekend, I bought a few tickets at the last moment and came away with a basket of several fat quarters and a cute pattern.

You brought up a good point about the uneven value of the baskets. I'm sure nobody even thought of it. We'll have to print up some sort of guidelines to ensure that doesn't happen.

Yes, I do think people prefer to choose which basket they have a chance of winning - I know I do. $5, I think too much for one chance to win a basket.

20 for $5 might be too many, because some people can't be bothered filling out 20 stubs. We had volunteers that would help fill out the stubs.

My guild does a "Penny Sale" for dozens of baskets. I think $1 got you

20 or 25 little tickets to put in the baskets of your choice. We had them for everyone, not just quilters. One of the popular ones was a large laundry basket filled with baby items.

We also sell raffle tickets for our guild quilt for about a year before the show. We show the quilt and sell tickets at various venues all through the year, other quilt shows, quilt stores, etc. It is raffled off the day of our show.

One of our local Janome dealers donates a new mid-range Janome for a separate raffle and we have a huge basket of fat-quarters as second prize . We bring in fat-quarters at every meeting during the year for a

50-50 raffle. If you bring in one fat-quarter you get 1 ticket, two fat-quarters = 2 tickets, etc. If you win, you get 1/2 of the fat-quarters that were brought in that night. All the rest are placed into a nice basket for the Quilt Show raffle. There must have been a couple hundred in this year's show basket. Boo-Hoo, I won nothing!! :(

My girlfriend went to a quilt show a couple of weeks ago and there was a cute idea for a fundraiser. They made and sold English "Cracker" type items. Crackers are small tubes filled with little toys and confetti that you pop like a tiny firecracker at Holidays, The guild had collected lots and lots of scrap fabric up to fat-quarter size. You fill an empty paper towel tube with assorted, nice pieces of fabric, wrap a fat-quarter around the tube and secure the ends with ribbon. For $2 you got a nice assortment of scrappy fabric. My friend bought one with really pretty butterfly material on the outside, and 6 more pieces of asst. fabric, all with butterflies on the inside.

Another fund raiser I've seen at a quilt show was "Buy a zip-lock baggie for $1, $2, or $3, depending on size and fill it with as many scraps as you want. Organizers bring in 3 or 4 large laundry baskets and fill them with donated scraps from the guild members. New scraps are added every couple of hours. I've had a ton of fun filling baggies for scrap quilts or finding a few batiks I don't have or neon brights for my collection.

Hope this helps.

Denise in NH

I don't think it matters if the value of the baskets are similar or not. Our guild had baskets of varying worth. Some had a few fat-quarters and a book in a nice little wicker basket, some had about $100 worth of baby items (happily won by a woman who was going to a Baby Shower soon). We only put our tickets in the baskets we might want, there were tons of tickets in every basket. Something that might appeal to me (anything quilt related) might not be appreciated by a non-quilter who would prefer the movie tickets, microwave popcorn and free video rentals basket. I wouldn't care if the movie package was worth more, I'd rather have the material and book.

We have a very large guild, with quite a few Bees. Each bee was in charge of putting a basket together.

Guild Members could donate something towards the show baskets all year, that duplicate book you received as a gift, the extra yard of material you bought too much of, that stack of charm squares you got at the guild Christmas party that just doesn't match anything in your stash, etc. The list is endless.

I think putting a required value on your donation basket might discourage someone from donating a nice little basket of interesting items.

A basket idea I think would be cute is going to the antique or flea market and purchasing two china teacups, add a variety of teas, honey, and a quilted tea cozy with matching napkins.

Items don't need to be expensive to be worth a ticket.

Denise in NH

Here's an idea to use when selling muliple tickets. Have the buyer enter the information into a notebook and assign a number. Then he/she just puts that number on the tickets. (We used a marker.) When the ticket with a number is drawn, just check the book for the winner's name. People really appreciated not having to fill out the tickets at the table!

What a great idea, Kathyl. I do hope Susan comes back through and sees it. Putting info on every ticket would be a pain in the neck. Polly

"KJ" Here's an idea to use when selling muliple tickets. Have the buyer enter

I always carry those freebie return address labels that I get in the mail- with requests for donations. They are easy to slap on a raffle ticket- I just add my phone number. I trim the labels off before putting them in my wallet- any pictures or excess label beyond the necessary info printed on them. And then you can actually read my name and address.... as opposed to my arthritis-influenced handwriting.

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

That is a great idea Kathy - thanks. I'll pass it on to the committee.

I've done that in the past Leslie....especially when I've gone to Paducah where there are mailing lists to sign up for, etc. But I seem to loose them in my "stuff" or leave them home on the kitchen counter after getting them out to pack. The "number in the book" seems to attract a lot of people who might skip buying multiple tickets just because it's a pain to fill out that many tickets.

I saw it at a quilt show one time. When I suggested it to our guild when we had a raffle quilt, you would have thought I had invented sliced bread! One of my better days!!!! :-)

We do baskets at guild meetings. We have a roll of double tickets - two tickets side by side with the same number on them. The person puts one in the basket of choice and keeps the other. Since we're all there for the drawing people just check their tickets for the winning numbers.

I went to one quilt show that used these. They posted the winning numbers on a white board. You checked your tickets to see if you won and claimed your prize.

marcella

Hi Marcella,

I'm hoping to get to your quilt show next weekend! Hope the weather is better than it's been this past week.

I met 2 of your guild members in April at our meeting - sorry you couldn't make it, but we had to change our meeting date to accommodate a church function.

I agree that the baskets don't have to be of equal value as long as the list of items included is clear so people know when they are adding their ticket to the can. The value thing wasn't the entire reason we changed our minds about having bees do baskets. We just wanted to take a different approach this time.

Susan