Quiltmaker Collaborators

As a young mom, I began a lifelong love of quilting. Early in my quilting journey, I made the simplest of patterns come to life using basic colors. Soon, I was exploring bolder color combinations. Once I understood the basic principles of color, I realized that was only half the fun! The most exciting, vibrant colors would practically jump off the quilt when combined using the right geometric patterns. After 20 years of quilting, I still find the same sense of accomplishment when I find the right combination of fabrics to complete a pattern perfectly.

At first, I learned how to quilt out of necessity. My first child was moving from his crib to a ‘big boy’ bed and we just couldn’t afford to buy him bedding at the stores. After making enough quilts for all of our beds (times two or three), quilting isn’t just for me and my family anymore. I have made more than 300 quilts in the past two decades. There is nothing quite like seeing the face of the recipient of a quilt. I love watching someone realize that I have spent time choosing just the right fabric, sewing each seam, praying for them as I sew. Giving a quilt is my way of loving someone.

Of all the people I have given quilts to, however, the ones I remember the most are the women that shared a nursing home wing with my mom. My mom had been rapidly declining due to Alzheimer’s for quite some time already and she lived on a dementia wing of a nursing home. Every time I visited her, I realized that many of the other women living there received no visitors at all. Since they were suffering from dementia, it’s easy to imagine that it’s no big deal – they wouldn’t remember anyway. I decided to do something special for these easily forgotten people. I made a quilt for each one of them. Over the next 3 years, I spent my free time choosing fabric, picking out patterns, trying new quilting techniques so that I would be able to bring one quilt for each bed of my mom’s wing. Finally at Christmas, I brought in a stack of eighteen quilts and shared one with each person.

Of course, there were the typical ooh’s and aah’s at the quilts. But what I remember the most was one woman hugging her quilt close to her, going over to the nurse on her shift, and declaring with absolute certainty that her daughter had made this beautiful quilt for her! Dementia is like that – it really didn’t matter to me that she thought an absent daughter had spent the hours creating this masterpiece for her. What was important to me was that this woman was feeling important, she felt valued, if only for a few fleeting moments, when everything would become hazy once again.

Until a few years ago, I really thought quilting was a solo sport. I now know better. I became a teacher at a preschool housed within a nursing home. At the school where I taught, the teachers were expected to teach weekly units – decorating the room, teaching thematic units including stations all around the room, making sure our preschoolers not only learned their A, B, C’s and 1, 2, 3’s – but also were exposed to science, art, and whatever else our creative minds could come up with. Since the preschool is housed inside a nursing home, we also tried to make connections with our “Grandfriends” from the nursing home as often as we could.

One year, I approached the nursing home to see if we could try a collaborative project. I knew there was a group of Grandfriends that met each week to work on quilting. I wondered if there might be a way for my class of preschoolers to discover something new as they worked together with their Grandfriends to make a quilt. The Grandfriends were excited at the chance to collaborate with their young friends. So – Art Week began!

On each day of Art Week, we learned about a different type of art. On the day we learned about textiles, I had brought in fabric squares. My class had so much fun laying them out exactly the way they wanted them to look in their quilt. Once they were “perfect,” we passed them along to our quiltmaking Grandfriends, who sewed them together into a quilt for us! After the quilt was finished, we donated it to a local organization that gives beds and bedding to families in need.

The next year, the Grandfriends initiated our collaborative project a second time. Our quiltmaking project had been such a success for both the Grandfriends and for my class, I was thrilled to accept! We donated three quilts this time!

Many people think that older people, as they begin to lose their faculties are unable to be productive members of society. I see it differently. If we take the time to find value in our older people, they still have much to contribute to our world. And very few people think that our children can contribute anything meaningful to society. The collaborative project I did as a preschool teacher, matching up 4-year olds with Grandfriends, has opened my eyes to enormous possibilities!

Today, I am a children’s ministry director at a beautiful church in Minnesota. Every summer, I direct a summer program that gives kids opportunities to reach out and support our local community, using their hands and feet. Not only have we continued on with the Quiltmaker Collaboration that started with my preschool class a few years ago, we also cut up t-shirts and braid them to make jump ropes for kids that are living at the local women’s shelter, we cut sheets into strips that will become bandages for a hospital in Congo, we decorate terra cotta pots and plant geraniums that the kids deliver to the elderly of our congregation, we make fire starters for a local campground that serves the disabled community, and more! Our church, our families, and the kids themselves are discovering that age is irrelevant to how much impact one can make in your community.

As I continue making quilts in my own studio, playing with color and pattern, I love to learn new techniques and try new gadgets. My dream is to make quilts to give away. I have two main goals right now – I’d like to donate quilts to a children’s home in Kenya and to a women’s shelter in St. Paul. As I work toward those goals, it’s so fun to share my love of quilting with the youngest generation – to expose them to the freedom of putting colors together however they want and to see their eyes light up in excitement at the possibilities they see. Hopefully, my love of quilting will be transferred to the next generation as we collaborate together.