Friday, January 02, 2009
Quilts and comfort for war veterans
Coverlets were sewn for soldiers even in the Civil War.
Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times
Donna Kittelson works on a quilt Sunday in her home. Kittelson is part of a group called the Sassy Stitchers that has met since spring at St. John's Lutheran Church on Brambleton Avenue. The 13-member group makes quilts for local veterans.
Spools of thread sit on Kittelson's work table. Kittelson has also helped make quilts for missions and charities.
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Joyce Noell would see it on the news, and hear chatter about it at the local quilting guild. Quilters from all over the country were sending their creations to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who were being treated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Quilters in the Roanoke Valley began contributing, but to Noell and some of her friends, it seemed that some veterans weren't getting the quilts and the comfort they deserved.
"I thought, 'Why don't we start a Roanoke quilters group?' " Noell, a retired Salem High School teacher, said recently. "There are young people who are coming back here, terribly hurt, and are sort of forgotten, but we really do care about them."
Noell and a dozen others have been meeting at St. John Lutheran Church in Roanoke County once a month for the past year to stitch patchwork, and have so far donated quilts to four veterans living in the region.
During their meetings, they teach each other new patterns for the quilts. Each quilt can take up to 30 hours to create. The group, part of the Smith Mountain Lake Quilters Guild, goes by the moniker Sassy Stitchers.
They're not the first to make quilts in wartime.
"There's evidence this was being done during the Civil War," said Joan Knight, former director of the Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg.
Confederate and Union families would give soldiers the family quilt to use as a blanket during war. Later, groups began making and selling quilts to raise money for troops, and what they couldn't sell, they would send to soldiers.
Troops returning from duty began to use the coverings when the military asked quilters to make cot-sized comforters for hospitals.
In World War I, the American Red Cross made nine-patch quilts with red crosses on them. Famous people signed them, and they were sold to raise money. President Woodrow Wilson signed at least one of the quilts, Knight said.
The wartime quilts became a symbol of comfort and warmth for men and women in military service.
"Women have always sewed their feelings into their quilts ... their concerns for their men, for their brothers in battle," Knight said. "It's something that they can do to be a part of the war effort, and it gives comfort to their loved ones and anyone who is away in service."
People who have received quilts from the Sassy Stitchers have included an Army reservist who worked in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a World War II nurse who served on D-Day and Wes Dickson, a World War II medic who was at the raising of the U.S. flag in Iwo Jima.
Dickson's quilt is made of blue and green patches, which he said are his favorite. He covers himself with it when he goes to sleep.
"I thought that the veterans thing had been long forgotten, so I was very surprised when I got it," said Dickson of Roanoke. "And I was very grateful for it."
