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Spreading warmth
Piecemakers group to donate quilts to Salvation Army
By JoAnn Jones
On the door of a large sunlit room in Bethel Lutheran Church in Boardman is a sign:
“Warning! Quilt Pox! Very contagious to adults! No known cure!”
The nine women inside, however, never heed the warning when they meet every Tuesday — as they have for 20 years — to make quilts, primarily to give away.
“This is such a light, bright place,” said Susan Burgeson, the original facilitator of the Bethel Lutheran Piecemakers. “We love to be here with one another.”
For the past few months, the nine ladies in the group have been making quilts to donate to the Salvation Army on Glenwood Avenue.
“We think they’re an excellent organization,” Burgeson said. “They are both social and religious. Our fathers used to talk about the Salvation Army and how they never charged for anything.”
“Our church collects for the Salvation Army as bell ringers at Christmas, too,” she said.
“During the really bad heat, they were taking people into their air- conditioned gym,” added Helen LoSasso, the group’s facilitator.
In the past three months, the group donated 15 quilts initially and 21 the second time. The women are working on a third donation.
“We have so much material that people have given us,” LoSasso said. “Rosemary Brocious moved to Colorado and donated all her quilting materials to us. She can’t quilt anymore, but she was a beautiful quilter.”
“She still sends us items for quilts,” Burgeson added. Brocious also gave the group the warning sign on the door.
All the ladies in the Piecemakers live in the Boardman/Austintown area, but not all are members of the church.
“We’re a close group,” Burgeson said, “but not a closed group. Sometimes people come here to find out how to do things. We’re a church group, but it’s pretty much up to us as to what we want to do.”
Other members, in addition to Burgeson and LoSasso, include Margit Zilke, Ruth Schenker, Martha Konrad, Marlene Sherfel, Doris Gluck, Marlene Martin, and Linda Spencer. The ladies meet weekly from 10 to 2, take a lunch, and eat in the room. But they get a lot done, according to LoSasso.
“If we all worked on the same quilt on one day, we could probably finish one,” she said.
The quilts are made from various materials, such as flannel pajamas and denim, LoSasso said. The women cut the squares, assemble them in a pattern they like, tie them, and then bind them. One square that Schenker made had 16 different pieces of material in it.
“Ruth does a lot of our machine sewing,” she added, “after the women baste a double turn-up on the edges of the quilt.”
According to Burgeson, they use a surgeon’s double knot to tie the quilts, but they also do quilting on frames. Using frames is a much longer, involved process, Gluck said.
“Regular quilts on frames take months to do,” LoSasso said. “That’s why we tie them.”
Sherfel said, “We don’t want to give out junk,” so the women work very well together and learn from one another as they cut, tie, baste, and sew. Still they need support from others outside the group.
“At the very beginning when we formed the group, we had $60 in donations from the church,” Burgeson said. “We never asked again until a few weeks ago.”
Although much of their actual material has been donated, they still take donations for other parts of the quilt, such as the batting.
“That’s what we need,” Burgeson said. “We hope people will donate that.”
In addition to quilts for the Salvation Army, Burgeson said, they also make quilts to give to babies at their baptisms.
“We also give to families that have adopted children or that have a lot of children,” she added. “Sometimes we donate if there’s a disaster, too. We serve different needs.”
“We thought a quilt would be a bright spot in someone’s life — for big and little children alike,” Burgeson said. “We’re going to promote the Salvation Army. You never hear anything bad about it.”