To carry out
Mission #1 and #2, we hold a Children's Quilt Block Contest named in
honor of founder Edith Chamberlain, in which young people from
nursery school to high school learn to make blocks which may be used
for quilts. We donate quilting books and magazine subscriptions
to the local libraries, to increase the resources for burgeoning
quilters. For our own skill advancement, we have classes and
workshops taught by our more experienced members or sometimes by
traveling teachers. We take day-trips by bus to quilt shows or
special stores, where we can be inspired, awed, and "augment our
textile collections."
Mission #3 is where
we really invest our hearts and souls: In 1986, we
first started making quilts for David's House (a low-cost temporary
residence for the families of critically ill children being treated at
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital.) We provide quilts for each child
to take home as their own, and we also make bed quilts for the
families' rooms at David's House. Currently, our productivity for
this project alone is between 160 and 200 quilts and pillows.
Closer to home, our
"comfort quilts" go out to local families who have suffered a fire,
accidents or serious illness, and "cruiser quilts" are carried by the
local police and fire departments to give to children and some adults
who have experienced some type of trauma. Working in conjunction
with our sister guild in Moultonboro, we help provide patriotic bed
quilts for the hospitalized veterans at the V.A. Hospital in Tilton, NH.
We also make quilts
for the Child Advocacy Center. These quilts are for children of
abuse.
If someone needs
help, our response is a quilt! On an ad hoc basis, such
comforters have been made for people all over the country:
hurricane victims, our American wounded soldiers coming home from Iraq
and Afghanistan, and flood victims. As they say, "A person under
a quilt is covered with love."
