Needy kids’ quilts made with love
Group seeks to create valued possession for area’s foster children
One little girl said she liked maps. Another, the colors pink and purple. There have been requests for SpiderMan and Batman, soccer balls and, recently, for “goth.”
With such snippets of information, five Santa Fe women are making hand-pieced quilts for children in the state’s foster care system. Many of the quilts are designed and sewn for a specific child, although the quilt makers know almost nothing beyond the youngster’s favorite colors and toys. One superhero quilt went to a girl who is being separated from her siblings and moved out of state.
The Quilts for Kids initiative is similar to other charity projects for children, such as Project Linus, a Bloomington, Ind.-based program in which volunteers make blankets for ill and traumatized kids. The quilts are distributed through CASA, or Court-Appointed Special Advocates, an organization that trains volunteers to advocate for children in the state’s child welfare system.
So far, the Santa Fe women have made about 30 quilts, but their goal is to complete one for each of the 100 children in foster care in Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Rio Arriba counties.
These are children who have suffered severe abuse and neglect and who have no identified permanent
caregivers.
Many of them also have nightmares, and the quilts offer a little bit of security.
And a quilt may be the child’s only possession, the only thing he or she has to take to the next in a long string of foster homes.
According to Annie Rasquin, executive director of CASA, the quilts are very meaningful to the children, some of whom have been taken from their homes in the middle of the night with only a garbage bag filled with their meager belongings.
“This really happens,” Rasquin said. “They don’t have grandparents making them things like this. When they receive a quilt, they are getting an heirloom.”
Pat Simon said when a little girl received a quilt Simon had made based on the popular animated Disney film, Frozen, the girl “didn’t say a word, but she wouldn’t let go of it.”
Constance “Stanze” Joy showed a note she received from another little girl. “Thank you for the quilt,” it said. “I like the color purple. It’s special. It has my name.” She signed the card with her name and a big heart.
The quilts especially help children who are transitioning from one home to another, the volunteers say.
Susan Leite said after seeing them, she decided to give one to her CASA child for the girl’s birthday. The girl had recently lost her parents and was adopted out of state. “The quilt I chose was soft flannel in shades of pink,” Leite said. “It was the perfect size for her to curl up and watch TV with her adoptive family — a happy conclusion to a very difficult case.”
Not only were the quilts “extraordinarily beautiful and well made,” Leite said, but what struck her was the “attention and care they put into each quilt.”
Last week, the women quilters gathered at Joy’s house in Rancho Viejo for a quilting tutorial. Some of the women are professional artists, and all have had long, rich artistic lives.
They have a range of skills. Vicki McGuffy, treasurer of the CASA board, has only been quilting a couple of weeks. But Joy has been doing this for decades and, according to the others, is a “true professional.” She has numerous art quilts and wall hangings, some of which decorate her home. And Kathy Guiles, whose husband is on the CASA board, has made 27 baby blankets for her own grandchildren and other members of the family.
Simon got the idea going. These are the kind of women who like a project, and have sewing skills and design talents — and the patience for the exacting work of quilting.
They’ve all had children, and now grandchildren. “We have a soft spot for kids and families,” said Mary Thompson, a professional artist who makes wood engravings. “We heard about this need, and it just touched us. And we’re at a stage in our lives where we have the time and a little talent. We all like to make things, but we don’t need anything for ourselves. This is the perfect solution.”
Thompson said her daughter in Colorado is now making a quilt for the project.
The quilts range from very simple to those with complicated piecing. Joy made one she calls the “I Spy” quilt, which is a lot of small squares of fabric depicting dogs, fish and other creatures. It begs children to play the game “I Spy.”
With a layer of batting and a backing piece of fabric, often from a soft, cozy material, the quilt forms a sandwich that is sewn together and bound on the sides. Some of them feature fancy, machine embroidered stitches.
The women, who also hike together, started meeting several months ago. At their monthly meetings, there is generally a little talk about techniques and patterns. Last week, some of the women brought their sewing machines, and Joy demonstrated shortcuts for making a quilt from half-square triangles. The women cut, sewed and ironed the squares that will make up the top of the quilt. Each task is painstaking. Each square must be perfect — and not every one met Joy’s standards.
As Simon worked on Joy’s Bernina sewing machine, Joy stood at the ironing board in her sewing room. “You have to iron [the squares] very nicely to get them flat,” she said as she showed how to steam one of the building blocks of the quilt.
The quilts, usually about 40 inches by 60 inches, take 15 hours or more to complete. The women do a lot of their own work at home but look to the quilting group for ideas, inspiration and skill development.
They get a kick out of seeing scraps from the clothes they’ve made for their own grandchildren in the new quilts and contributing to the lives of children in foster care.
“It’s fun to sew,” Guiles said, “but it’s fun to make something for someone special.”
As Simon said, between the quilters and the children, “I don’t know who’s more appreciative.”