Gene Dalton | Roanoke Times

Nancy Robertson and her grand-daughter Ellen Robertson look at one of the quilts made to give families of shooting victims.

An hour into Saturday's sewing party, hundreds of small, hand-knit squares lay strewn across tabletops and in clusters on the ballroom's floor.

Knitted and crocheted, in orange, maroon, black and white, each 8-by-8-inch swatch represented an individual gift of skill, sorrow and sympathy.

By day's end, many would be transformed into blankets -- warm and enveloping -- for the families of victims and others personally touched by the Virginia Tech shootings.

"When you knit, you think about the person you're knitting for with each stitch," said Gina Bonomo, owner of the Mosaic Yarn Shop in Blacksburg and organizer of the Hokie Healing knitting project.

Advertised in fliers and Internet forums, the Hokie Healing project has, in the past two months, collected about 6,100 squares from knitters in 50 states and 18 countries.

On Saturday, more than 100 project volunteers, from North Carolina, Richmond, Roanoke and throughout the New River Valley, gathered in an Inn at Virginia Tech ballroom to sew them into blankets. The volunteers, almost all women, sat in clusters of six or seven, heads bent, fingers flying.

Among them, grouped together in a corner, were Sharon Oliver of Radford, Ellen Robertson of Blacksburg and Wendy McClanahan of Floyd.

Strangers before that morning, the women worked to piece together a blanket from the 64 squares lying in front of them.

"I really didn't know quite what we would be doing," said McClanahan, a mother of three who identified herself as more of a quilter than a knitter. But "I had a skill that I thought I could use, and just the thought of being able to make something that would lay on the lap of one of the mothers of the victims -- just being a mother, you think about that."

Sewing beside McClanahan, Oliver said she first heard about the Hokie Healing project from her hairdressing clients and had immediately welcomed the chance to contribute.

"When it all happened, I felt so helpless," Oliver said of the shootings. "I thought, that is one thing I can do to help."

In the past few weeks, Oliver has knitted 10 squares, each with a different maroon and orange pattern, each representing her time, sympathy and good wishes.

Because of the sheer number of donated squares, Oliver said she hadn't found her own swatches -- and she didn't need to. While the squares had been the work of individuals, the blankets -- and the all-day sewing party arranged to make them -- represented a community effort.

"I felt like I was part of something really meaningful," Blacksburg resident Nancy Robertson said.

Robertson and her granddaughter Ellen knitted a total of 17 squares and spent much of Saturday sewing.

"It is staggering to see," McClanahan said. "I had heard on the news how many [squares had been donated], but it's completely different to see them all -- boxes and boxes -- and know that each one, someone made and spent time on."

"The more you think about it, the more you realize each one has a story, and the person who made it has a story -- just like each of the victims," she said.

By midday, 64 of those stories had intersected in a blanket.

Made of striped, checkered and Hokie bird-emblazoned swatches and unfurled with a triumphant "Hokie hy!" -- part of the cheer known as "Old Hokie" -- the first complete blanket of the day was met with applause, cheers and the flash of cameras.

Hours later, it was placed in a pile of other blankets, finished and folded, on a chair outside the ballroom.

Bonomo said she hopes to have at least 32 such blankets complete by today -- enough to send one to each of the victims' families. And the sewing won't stop there.

"We're just going to keep making them until there are no more squares left," Bonomo said.