Charity Sewing
Putting a fabric stash and a heart to good use
“Charity, like the sun, brightens every object on which it shines.” Confucius
I can still see them. Their bold saffron-yellow and black dashikis with matching pants captured my attention. The warm color splashed sunnily against Dulles terminal’s neutral palette of gray, chrome, and glass. The clutch of men wore identical clothing, like twins — or in their case, septuplets. Each of the seven grasped a translucent plastic bag, less than half-full. Their faces, variations on a theme, wore matching expressions of disorientation, apprehension, and fatigue. A bland-faced representative of the government or an NGO shepherded these refugees. The escalator whisked me up and away from the sight of them.
Their vulnerability touched my heart and I wished them well. Others had already extended friendly hands to them — the anonymous seamstresses, the “sewists,” the artist-sewers. They had cut and sewed the bolts of African fabric, so the men had new clothes for their new homeland.
My mother, Ruth Reier, had opened me to the world of charity sewing, of making and giving away clothing and household goods to those in need, to children and men and women she would never meet. She spent many of the hours and dollars of her final decades sewing for charity. Nearly all her handwork was on behalf of children. A precise, meticulous needlewoman, she carefully matched her quilts to an unknown child’s imagined taste and age. She chortled when she snared a particularly winning pattern at a good price. The quilts were for Project Linus, a non-profit organization which gives new handmade (sewn, knitted, or crocheted) blankets and afghans to “traumatized, ill, or otherwise needy children.” Since its inception in 1995, Project Linus has delivered over eight million blankets to children.
Closer to her heart was her teddy bear work. She and other women gathered regularly at the Godfrey Miller Home, at the time a senior activity center, in Winchester, Virginia to put together stuffed teddy bears. Faceless and with no moving parts, the simple cotton toys served an important function — solace and comfort for children…
