by Nathan Boddy
The air was crisp and cold on Thursday, December 5th, but the 112 colorful quilts that Sue Freehand, Laurie Gipson and Cari Cloud wheeled into the Living Centre in Stevensville represented loads of warmth.
The quilts are the handiwork of the Sapphire Quilt Club, a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to community service through provision of hand crafted goods. This year, many hours of work by its 80 members have been translated to the quilts which will be distributed to each of the residents of the Living Centre on Christmas morning.
Each of the quilts consists of a central fabric panel, but expanded with other pieces, laid over soft batting and sewn to a backing to result in a substantial quilt of approximately 45 by 60 inches.
Sue Freeland says that it will be up to the staff at the Living Centre to wrap and present the gifts to the residents.
“That way they can kind of pick, this would be perfect for this person or that person,” she said. Freeland pointed out the many varieties of quilts they brought in carried themes that could fit the many preferences and personalities of the seniors. Some were patriotic, some farm-themed, others a blast of warm colors.
Through their ‘Sunshine Program,’ The Sapphire Quilt Club maintains a collection of quilts that can be distributed when misfortune such as house fire strikes area neighbors. Through donations of fabric and the skill of its members, the club has 200 quilts on hand. However, according to Freeland, a simple realization of opportunity was the impetus for the mass donation at the Living Centre.
“I was going through my fabrics and I realized that I had a hundred more panels,” said Freeland. “I looked at it and I thought, why am I hanging on to all these?” Freeland explained that she’d been on the way to a quilters meeting at the time, and passed directly by the Living Centre when the idea occurred to her. She put the call out to other members last May, asking for completed quilts by November.
Laurie Gipson joked that quilting tends to be the confluence of two hobbies: collecting and quilting, and that she and other quilters saw this donation project as a way to both reduce their own collection of fabrics while graciously providing something of comfort for others.
Freeland, who admits that she is a “diva” when it comes to the pastime, said that she created 38 of the 112 and, “love(s) to make sure that they go somewhere that someone’s going to appreciate them.”
While the Sapphire Quilt Club accepts donations of fabric, Cari Cloud pointed out that much of the cost of the donation to the Living Centre was borne by members themselves through the usage of fabric that each member had on hand.
“I would say most everybody absorbed 90% of the cost on their own,” she said, adding that the club does purchase the inner batting for quilts, which it is able to do after raising funds through their regular fundraiser.
Alisha Bennet, Activities Director for the Living Centre, was positive that the residents are going to love the gifts.
“They’re gonna love it, the fact that these quilts are so colorful,” she said, saying that one of the farm patterns she’d seen would, “bring them back to home” since there are many farmers among the residents. “Blankets are always a hot commodity around here.”