Crafting more than 1,000 quilts has been a nine-year-long labour of love for the women of Hope Lutheran Church in Nanaimo.
The church’s quilting group of about 20 women meets every Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to make quilts to donate to Canadian Lutheran World Relief, a humanitarian organization that works to offer relief to people in need around the world.
The group was created by Linda Harvey in late 2010 as her way of giving thanks for the healing of her grandson who was born seven weeks premature. The intent was to make 30 quilts when the quilting group started with just five women, but the group has grown to also include women from other congregations and together they recently passed the 1,000 quilt mark.
“We are probably up to about 1,030 quilts by now,” Harvey said in a press release.
The tally doesn’t include quilts made by a satellite group of quilters who also sew quilts to be shipped with the Hope Lutheran quilts.
All fabric and batting has been donated largely from the church’s men’s breakfast group and other individual donors and the quilters have also received a grant from Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada Women of Faith Fund.
Home Hardware ships the quilts to the Canadian Lutheran World Relief warehouse in Winnipeg.
“This experience has woven us together into a beautiful friendship,” Harvey said in the release. “We care for each other and for the people who will receive the quilts.”
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