Blogger: Kathy Schmidt, Quirks Ltd.
There are so many charity organizations doing so much good work that we often regret not being able to support them all. Our guild has made the choice to support Safehouse with quilts and I have sometimes heard members complain that we spend too much time talking about and working for that charity. I was struck by an article written by Julie Stocker on her blog Pink Doxies regarding that subject. You can click the link to read her entire article, but the part I liked the best was from her mother.
Yes, it would be easier to give some money to any organization than to spend time and energy making a quilt. But, according to Julie’s mother,
“We are sending hope when we send something handmade.
We are one person making something for another person.
We bring the human element into the picture. We have put our lives on hold to do something for someone else. We are hoping the recipient sees that we took time to make this one thing special for them. That we stitched the word love into it somewhere. That we took care to stitch it well. That we could have just thrown the thing together willy-nilly, but thought they might like something beautiful in their life while the rest of it was unsure. That we want them to have some of the same blessings we are grateful for in our own lives: warmth, security, and hope.”
I know that I do not spend a great deal of time on charity quilting. I can always find something else to do. But when I think about it in terms of giving hope and love to someone in need, I want to do better. I have great admiration for the members of our guild who have made so many, many lovely quilts for our chosen gifts of hope recipients. I hope to do better at this during the coming year.
Keep up the good work and thank you.
First published January 2017