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Patchwork presents
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Published: January 31, 2009
Updated: 02/02/2009 07:13 pm
Even in that dead week between Christmas and New Year's Day, they wanted to meet.
Members of the Quilters Group of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs kept stitching at a time when most organizations take a break. The brightly colored, child-friendly quilts they make have traveled across oceans to the children in Ethiopia providing a link that has touched both the makers of the quilts and the children who receive them.
The quilt-making project, Quilts Without Borders, was co-founded by former Tarpon Springs resident June Colburn. Another co-founder, Holly Fling, connected the quilters with her employer Raleigh, N.C.-based Cherokee, a firm that reclaims toxic waste sites around the world and has a charitable outreach program in Ethiopia.
Organizers in that program suggested a suitable orphanage for the quilt project. Cherokee also provides visitor housing and transportation for the quilters when they are in Ethiopia.
The nation of more than 78 million people in the Horn of Africa has struggled in recent decades with drought, famine, disease and ethnic and political strife.
The Tarpon Springs group supplied about one-fourth of the 252 quilts delivered in December to some of the children at an orphanage for HIV-positive children in the country's capital, Addis Ababa. It was the second delivery of quilts made to the orphanage, which is run by the Missionaries of Charity, the Roman Catholic religious order Mother Teresa of Calcutta founded.
One of the Unitarian quilters, New Port Richey resident Anni Callaghan, was in the small group that made the trip to deliver the quilts. As do all of the quilters, Callaghan paid for her trip.
In an account she wrote for the church, Callaghan describes the poverty she witnessed in Addis Ababa. "Not many of the massive population live in houses. Where they live would not even qualify as shacks. A ring of stones, a spare space on a sidewalk, a few sticks and a bit of plastic are homes to many."
Callaghan noted the quilts are the only possessions the children are allowed to have. Even clothing is distributed at random as the children line up.
This was the group's second delivery of quilts to the orphanage.
The first one was August 2007. In that first batch, quilters had originally been told to make quilts for 100 children. Just before they left, that figure had increased to 450.
Colburn is a national quilting designer teacher who travels regularly throughout the United States.
The Belleair Bluffs resident put out an SOS call to her contacts, including the Tarpon Springs quilters. That group contributed about 40 quilts for the 2007 trip.
"I had no idea they would respond with the kind of enthusiasm you see here and for a really deep love of children most will never see," Colburn says.
By the time they left, they had accumulated 220 machine washable, brightly colored quilts.
They decided to give those quilts to all the girls and toddlers and promised to return with quilts for the boys later.
On their December visit, they completed their promise and brought quilts for the boys.
Quilters from all over the country had made quilts for the children, Colburn says.
Unlike in some orphanages where, they were told, gifts to children often end up in the homes of staff, the children who had received the first quilts still had them.
The project is already beginning to expand beyond delivering quilts. Staff now must wring the bulky quilts out by hand to dry them.
Colburn decided making the leap from drying by hand to automatic dryers was probably too big for the Ethiopians at this time.
She remembered the wringer her mother used to take the water out of clothes and decided such a device would probably suit the culture better than more modern devices at this time.
She is already on the lookout for ringers to take to Ethiopia to show the people there so that they can make their own devices.
Before the project, Colburn remembers reflecting on her life and sensing she was missing something.
That feeling has disappeared with her involvement in the quilting project.
"I'm benefitting.
The women at the Unitarian Church are benefitting. It's satisfying the need to be useful outside yourself."
Cheryl Bentley can be reached at 727-815-1069 or cbentley@suncoastnews.com.
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