The Helping Hands department helps lots of quilters to find a way to use their skills to do good for others. The Sutter Cancer Center Quilt Auction is the featured charity in the TQL December issue and it offers a slightly different opportunity for quilters (in addition to the usual focus on quantity of quilts): quality of quilts! This event happens every three years, so you have time to give your all to a project to make it the best it can be or to make a sustained effort to perfect a new technique, and then donate it to the auction. I know I take my skill building a lot more seriously when it’s used for something that will be seen and not just on a practice piece. And when you know it will be auctioned, well, that’s even more motivation to master the technique. Check it out; December issue is on the newsstands now.