Quilts Bring Comfort to Seniors 

Habitat volunteer Stephanie Arend supports Tacoma Habitat’s mission in more ways than swinging a hammer. Arend is part of a group of 14 women—all retired, mostly judges or lawyers—who gather once a month at Arend’s home to create quilts for causes they care about. Thanks to the generosity of this group, called the Quilting Sisters, Tacoma/Pierce County Habitat for Humanity’s Aging in Place (AIP) program is now receiving handmade quilts to gift to income-qualified clients.

Arend says, “We all feel we were blessed, and we believe in giving back.  Habitat for Humanity is an organization that we all support.  Before retirement, I organized judges to assist at least once a year in a build.  After retirement, a few friends and I participated in Women Build. And of course, I usually am a table captain for the annual Changing Lives Luncheon.”

Most of these women did little or no sewing before joining the group, but Arend says “With a little trial and error, we find each person’s strength and how she can contribute. Some women cut the fabric, some iron, some machine sew, some hand sew, and some pull fabrics together for a particular pattern.  We have the quilts professionally quilted by a woman with a long arm machine. But we do all the rest. Being a part of this community is one of the reasons we do this.”

Joy Robson, one of the Quilting Sisters, reflects on her unlikely involvement with the group. “When I retired, I wanted to continue my life, full of friendship and activities. Joining a group of women making quilts was an unlikely choice since I haven’t sewn a stitch since seventh grade. I’d much rather play pickleball. But making quilts has jobs where you don’t have to actually sew, and the group is both fun and purposeful.”

Up to now, the Quilting Sisters have donated quilts to various causes including organizations that help young mothers, formerly incarcerated women, or adoptive families, and now, seniors and disabled veterans through AIP.

Arend says, “We are very excited to [start] gifting quilts to seniors and disabled veterans through Habitat’s Aging in Place Program.” She also remarked that the “labels sewn into the quilts explain the quilters’ intent: ‘This quilt was handmade for you as a labor of love to warm your body and comfort your soul.’”

In the two years the women have been gathering, they have made over 30 quilts. Arend says that each quilt requires as many as 30 hours over several months to complete.

“Quilts are special,” Arend says, and shared the following portion of a speech by Tyler Perry that captures how she feel about quilts.

 When I was about 19 years old … my grandmother, she gave me a quilt that she had made. And this quilt was something I didn’t really care for. It had all these different colors and these different patches in it. And I was quite embarrassed by it. I had no value in it at all.

When the dog got wet, I dried him off with it. When I needed to change the oil in the car, I laid it on the ground. I had no respect for this quilt. Many years later, as I was walking past those fancy antique stores that I could finally go in and shop, I saw in the window a quilt that looked just like the one that she had given me.

As I’m in that store wondering where that quilt was, there was an attendant who walked up to me and said, “Let me tell you about this quilt. It was made by an African American woman who was a former slave and each patch in the quilt she had put in represented a part of her life. One part was from a dress that she was wearing when she found out she was free. Another part was from her wedding dress when she jumped the broom.”

And as I was hearing this story, I became so embarrassed. Here I was, a person who prides myself on celebrating our heritage, our culture, and I didn’t even recognize the value in my grandmother’s quilt.

I dismissed her work and her story because it didn’t look like what I thought it should. Now, whether we know it or not, we are all sewing our own quilts with our thoughts, our behaviors, our experiences and our memories. Like in my own quilt, one of my memories was I was about 10 years old. I remember my father standing at the door and I was wondering why he stood there so long.

He was frustrated and he walked away and I asked my mother what was going on. She said he had worked all weekend and he was waiting for the man to come and pay him and he never did. They needed the money at the time. And, I tell you, she was so frustrated, she turned to me and she said, “Don’t you ever stand by a door waiting for White folks to do nothing for you.”

Now, my mother wasn’t a racist. But, in her quilt, she couldn’t imagine a world where her son was not waiting by the door for someone. In her quilt, she couldn’t imagine me building my own door and holding that door open for thousands of people. In my mother’s quilt, she couldn’t imagine me owning land that was once a Confederate Army base where Confederate soldiers plotted and planned on how to keep Blacks enslaved.

And now, on that very land, Black people, White people, gay, straight, lesbian, transgender, ex-cons, Latin, Asian, all of us, come together, working. All coming together to add patches to a quilt that is as diverse as it can be. Diversity at its best.

I stand here tonight to say thank you to all of the people who are celebrating and know the value of every patch, and every story, and every color that makes up this quilt that is our business, this quilt that is our lives, this quilt that is America. Because in my grandmother’s quilt, there are no patches that represented Black people on television. But in my quilt, her grandson is being celebrated by the Television Academy. I thank you for this. God bless you.

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