FISHER HOUSE - HELPING MILITARY FAMILIES

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Every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., about a dozen quilters gather in the basement of Bethlehem Lutheran Church to do something nice for others in need.

In the process, they get something they need, too: friendship, conversation, fellowship and a social network that has nothing to do with the Internet.

“It’s a real good support group. We talk a lot. We know all about each other,” said Cathy Teeslink, who oversees the Bethlehem Quilters, a revitalized church ministry that produces about 150 quilts each year.

Comprised mostly of retired women who love to sew and quilt, the members converse about their lives while their hands are busy cutting, pinning, sewing and ironing pieces of fabric into colorful quilt covers that soon will become gifts of comfort and warmth to others.

“It’s a bunch of old widows mainly,” Teeslink said, and they keep close tabs on what’s going on with each other and their families.

The majority of Bethlehem’s quilts are given to children at Youth & Family Services. Those child-sized quilts, typically 40 by 50 inches, are made from whatever assortment of donated fabric the group has on hand.

YFS valued the quilts donated by Bethlehem at $2,000 last year, but the quilters know that the real value of their work is less tangible.

“It’s a comfort kind of thing,” she said.

 Larger quilts go to elderly shut-ins or people facing illness, surgery or disability. A few rugged quilts made from flannel and used denim get donated to Cornerstone Rescue Mission.

In the past three years, quilter Carolyn Magda has delivered a supply of quilts to the Fisher House, a hospitality home for families of wounded American soldiers being treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Those quilts have helped keep injured troops warm during cold flights back to the U.S. in military transport planes.

Special baby quilts are also given to each baby born into Bethlehem’s congregation.

On Wednesday, Joyce Bowman was busy with yet another quilting group project — a new altar cloth done in tiny green-hued squares that matches the quilted banners the group made for the church sanctuary. Bowman knows she’ll be busy for a while cutting and piecing the 1-inch squares. The Rev. Joshua Jones has already told the group he would like a stole to match the altar cloth.

Teeslink says the group relies on donations — “people who are cleaning out their closets” — but it also stumbled on a way to become a self-sufficient ministry after it began doing Quilt Sunday on the last Sunday of September each year. Begun as a way to bless the quilts at church services before they are sent off to their new owners, Quilt Sunday quickly became a fundraising tool as people began asking, “Can I buy this quilt?” The money raised through the sale of a dozen or more quilts each year allows the group to pay for the quilt batting it uses and to buy fabric for special-occasion quilts.

“Somehow, God takes care of that stuff,” Teeslink said.

In addition to Teeslink, Bowman and Magda, the group includes Jan Cole, Sue Corth, Leola Dockter, Lucille Kerner, Delores Matusiak, Mary Ann Nietz, Judy Rickard, Kay Schwandt, Janet Thompson and Doris Swaney. Some of the quilts are hand-tied, but Schwandt machine-quilts all the others on her home quilting machine. Corth volunteers her time to bind the edges of all the quilts.

Teeslink, herself a retired widow, thinks the popularity of quilting among younger women means the Bethlehem Quilters will continue the ministry long after she’s gone.

“I don’t think it is going to die out,” she said. “I didn’t have time to quilt when I was working full time and raising kids, either. I think others will get involved when they have time to.”

Just to be sure, she’s passing her quilting skills on to her own grandchildren. Eleven-year-old James recently finished his own quilted pillow — done in camouflage.

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