Submitted by William R Fee
On any given Tuesday morning, the lower level of Cedar Falls FUMC is overflowing with women sharing fellowship and treats as they happily cut, match and stitch quilt pieces. This is hardly your typical group of “Church Basement Ladies”; these are the Quilting Warriors of First Church!
In 2022 alone, this band of sisters was responsible for approximately 230 quilts. They lovingly stitched over 80 youth quilts and distributed them to our partners in education school, to Black Hawk County Adoption Day, foster children, and young adults aging out of the foster system. These women also created 45 Cover with Love quilts for Midwest Missions, as well as 70 comfort quilts for people in Iowa correction facilities, veterans, as memorials, and 11 new families’ Habitat for Humanity Homes were each blessed with the warmth of a quilt.
The quilters also handcrafted more quilts to be sold at the church’s rummage sale and Mission Ingathering. Along with the sale of other miscellaneous small quilts and quilted items, these generous women generated over $2000 to donate to various missions.
Their work doesn’t stop at making quilts. Last year, they also made 430 school bags, 104 hygiene kits, 12 layette kits, and 20 baby kimonos for Mission Ingathering. In 2019, they started making menstrual kits for Days for Girls International. Their efforts this year produced 825 liners, 300 shields, and 207 bags to be distributed throughout the world.
Armed with needles, shears, fabric, and thread, this amazing group of women continues to blanket the world with compassion, warmth, and love, one quilt at a time.