Quilters spread cheer all year with service projects

PALMER — Normally, teen-aged boys might not be delighted to receive an old-fashioned quilt for Christmas. But these aren’t your average, run-of-the-mill quilts. And they aren’t your everyday youngsters, either.

Both have had a rather “scrappy” life and are now whole again, thanks to the love and care of the Valley Quilters’ Guild and Valley foster parents — united through the Alaska Center for Resource Families.

“They’ll be thrilled,” said one long-time foster mother who finally was able to adopt three sons. “These boys have been through so much abuse and neglect in their lives, I know they will truly appreciate getting these Christmas quilts made by such wonderful ladies.”

A dozen quilts made by about 26 Valley women working together since September — piece by piece, stitch by stitch — landed on Besty Woodin’s doorstep at 5050 Dunbar in Wasilla.

As the director of the Alaska Center for Resource Families, Woodin was quite familiar with the Valley Quilters’ Guild through various other donations they’d made over the years to victims of domestic violence, natural disasters and children’s diseases, among others.

“These are spectacular quilts,” Woodin said. “And the fact that so many people pulled together to make them happen for such a wonderful cause is really special. It makes for a much more meaningful gift to a young person who has been deprived of so much love for so long.”

But those quilts are only a small sample of the more than 200 such masterpieces completed by the majority of the guild’s more than 200 members since January.

Twenty of the group’s Christmas/winter-themed projects are now hanging in 16 businesses in downtown Palmer as part of its “Quilt Walkabout” during the Colony Christmas celebration until Dec. 13.

Visitors to at least 12 of the 16 businesses who get a special postcard stamped at each stop will be eligible to win their own homemade quilt created by Sharon Sweiter called “Yule Logs,” said guild member Lynn Gronlund.

They just have to slip their stamped postcard into a box located at Cover Ups at 840 Colony Way, she said.

“We haven’t had a place to display our quilts since the Cottonwood Mall was torn down,” said Gronlund, whose been quilting for about six years now. “We’re happy to have some places now where people can easily view our work.”

Many of those in the guild don’t consider quilting “work,” however.

It’s a relaxing, sometimes social form of artistic self-expression — and even spiritual, they say.

Guild President Mary Thompson shared a story Friday about a quilt she was asked to make for the mother of Butte paramedic Cameron Carter, who died in a tragic helicopter crash two years ago.

Thompson’s son, Matthew, had worked with Carter at the Wasilla Fire Department.

“At first I was reluctant to do it because I didn’t know him. I didn‘t know how to bring good memories to his mother through the quilt,” said Thompson, whose been quilting for five years. “But my son told me the kinds of things Cameron liked and his mother gave me some pictures of him. One of them was of Cameron standing in front of Pioneer Peak. My son said, ‘That’s the one.’ ”

After praying about it, Thompson began creating one of her signature “landscape” quilts with the fallen 24-year-old standing in a meadow with Pioneer Peak behind him and water before him.

“The mother was so grateful, I tear up now just thinking about it,” Thompson said. “That’s the best part of this hobby — making something special for someone else.”

Quilting is also a way for mothers and daughters to grow closer, as Thompson and fellow guild member Joanna Stokinger learned.

For Thompson, it was her 34-year-old daughter, Heather Griffin, who enticed her to join in. Griffin had been quilting since she was 13.

“We have an extra bedroom at the house that has become our sewing room,” she laughed. “So it’s never too late!”

For Stokinger’s 12-year-old daughter Tessah, her mother is inspiring her and her fellow Girl Scouts to someday join Valley Quiters’ Guild by participating in the group’s “Sew for Service” day last Saturday at the Palmer Depot.

“I’m trying really hard this year to teach my girls that they’re not the center of the world by having them try some service projects,” Stokinger said of Girls Schools Troop 439, whose members have been together since they were in the third grade. “They not only learned how to quilt, but they learned how to make beds for dogs in local animal shelters. They loved it.”

For more information on the Valley Quilters’ Guild or their Quilt Walkabout in Palmer, call 745-2500 or visit www.valleyquiltersguild.org.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.McKee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.