Cottage Quilters donate 77 quilts
The programme started several years ago when quilters adapted their traditional focus on large bed covers to creating covers to suit tiny newborn babies, supplying enough each year to the Dannevirke Community Hospital birthing unit for each newborn’s parents to have one for free, doubling as a cot cover and floor/bench mat for changing nappies.
This year the group has donated 25 and is always on call when supplies become short.
A second focus two years ago was knee quilts to keep the elderly warm and over the year, especially during winter. Cottage Quilters have donated 17 to the Elske Centre and
Rahiri Home.
Last year they began supplying Foster Hope, an organisation which does its best to cater for children fostered out. Often these children are uplifted from their living conditions at very short notice and leave with barely the clothes they are wearing. Cottage Quilters have donated 31 bed quilts to this organisation, some of them quite big to meet the needs of teenagers.
This year Cottage Quilters have found another worthy cause in Woven Earth — an organisation to help women recently resident in a refuge and moving out into a new residence. They often have little to furnish their new accommodation and the organisation sets out to help them get comfortable. Obviously, these women need bed quilts — kind of back to the way Cottage Quilters started out. So far eight have been donated.
There will still be more coming off the production line in the next year — enough to put on a display in Spring — but this hobby is not cheap. Cotton materials need to be new and reasonably bright and the batting to provide the warmth is also expensive.
If people have cotton materials to spare or would like to contribute to the purchase of them and batting please contact Barbara Christian. Better still, if you are a sewer and would like to join Cottage Quilters give Barbara a ring. It would be a lovely Christmas present just like the quilts.