charities

Quilt Charities Accumulate

Even before the AIDS Memorial Quilt brought notice to the charitable qualities contained within a few patches of fabric and some thread that holds those patches together, quilts have brought comfort to those in need. Recently, news about how quiltmakers and their products have comforted everyone from the elderly to soldiers to the sickly have make headlines. I’ve listed a few of those items here so that your heart can be warmed. Additionally, these news stories offer great ideas on how your quilting bee or any other group can bring comfort to those around you.

“I’ve sewn before,” the Milton Hershey School seventh-grade pupil said last week as she and about a dozen other girls made quilts for a project to give them sewing experience and to warm the homeless. “I’ve made pillows. But it’s fun to sew for someone else.” Story details how this school distributes quilts to area homeless and other needy people. Read more at The Patriot-News.

The colorful quilts that last month brightened the whitewashed walls of Tucson Medical Center have found permanent homes â€â€? and raised about $120,000 for women’s cancer research and outreach. Read more at The Arizona Daily Star.

Several of Edith Chevalier’s handmade quilts will be part of the Nov. 6 Falsettoland concert at New World Stages to benefit Miracle House. Matthew Wexler, a spokesperson for Miracle House, told Playbill.com that Falsettoland director John Znidarsic was inspired to feature the quilts in the musical after meeting with Chevalier, an American of Trinidadian ancestry. Read more at PlayBill.

As temperatures drop, North Side High School students are warming the hearts and bodies of sick and needy children with handmade quilts. The fashion and textile students donated their quilts to Project Linus Fort Wayne/Northeast Indiana Chapter on Friday. Read more at the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.

A Community Quilting Day in Idaho recruited more than 30 volunteers who cut, stitched and tied handmade quilts and blankets to be donated to local community groups. Read more at the Idaho State Journal.

A group of women from Minnesota discovered that there is a need for lap quilts in hospitals as well as onsite residences where injured soldiers returning from Iraq live during their recovery. So - they got together and created the quilt group THREADS OF THANKS, for the sole purpose of making and distributing these lap quilts.

The mission of the QOV Foundation is to cover all combat wounded servicemembers whether physical or psychological with wartime quilts called Quilts of Valor (QOVs). The wounded servicemembers from the War on Terror or Long War are to be considered first and foremost.

Lastly - but not least - on this list is FiberArt for a Cause, Fundraising for the American Cancer Society. I’ll keep you updated here about their upcoming FFAC Invitational Reverse Auction of fiber art coming in Spring 2007.

© 2006 QuiltsHome.