Community

Outreach

Guild members create and donate quilts and work on quilts during our Comfort Quilt Workshop meeting each October and our monthly Studios.

Guild members create these quilts from their own fabrics, or use the Guild's amazing stash of donated fabrics. For those reluctant to design their own quilts, those who are terrified of choosing colors, and those who are short on time, we have quilt kits made with quilts from our stash, available at every meeting and Studio session for members to check out like library books and just put together - thus making it as easy as possible for everyone to produce a comfort quilt!

2025 Comfort Quilts Donation from Nettie and Toni: Thank You Both So Much!!

Remember the twins Nettie and Toni, Vicki Bowman’s friends from New Paris PA who brought baskets of their comfort quilts to us at Studio last April? The ones who make quilts together and share a longarm? Well, they’ve done it again!! They dropped off 17 beautiful and beautifully made comfort quilts this week – SEVENTEEN, mind you! And most of them are at least throw size. Just look at these!

Just a few of the comfort quilts the guild creates

For 2025, our group (we call ourselves “The SewFabs”) brought the dresses we created throughout the year to the Old Country Store for donation. This year the total was 213! The Old Country Store now partners with the United Methodist Church, who sponsor a mission in Liberia. Twice a year they send the children’s dresses to their mission for distribution to local orphanages.

Joyce Tobiassen spearheads the Ryan's Case for Smiles efforts by creating fun pillowcase kits for those willing to sew them. She forwards the finished pillowcases on to the coordinators at Ryan's

July, 2025 Update: Placemats: Thank you so much again! We collected 125 placemats for our Meals on Wheels seniors. That’s 19 more than we made in February! Here are some of the placemats donated since then. There will be 125 more smiles in July!

Christine Shevock

Christine Shevock suggested a new community outreach effort for us, making placemats for our local Meals on Wheels.

Meals on Wheels would love to work with us to distribute placemats to their clientele. They have previously worked with a quilt group but currently have no one providing placemats as we are proposing. I have in mind that we focus on 4 holidays to brighten a meal recipient's day. Valentine's Day, 4th of July, Halloween and Christmas. We do need to use ‘winter’ fabrics if we wish a theme for Christmas as they have clients from different backgrounds. See their guidelines below. I will plan to collect them at a meeting just prior to the holiday and deliver them to Meals on Wheels on Columbia Ave in Lancaster Twp. for you. I also have some ‘food’ fabrics you are welcome to have fun with.

Placemats will be collected the month prior to the holiday so we have them in time for delivery for the holiday.

Collection for Valentine's Day will be in January
Collection for 4th of July will be in June
Collection for Fall/Halloween will be in September
Collection for Christmas will be in November.

Collection will occur at Studio and the scheduled monthly meeting for those months. If there is a zoom meeting scheduled for that month, collection will be at Studio only or whatever other arrangements we can make.

Meals on Wheels Guidelines:

1-Please avoid political or religious messages or themes

2-Please bear in mind that we have clients from all different backgrounds, so it's hard to send out "Christmas" material, but we can certainly send out "winter" placemats.

3-On average, we serve 500 meals/ day!

Placemats are simply a quilt sandwich, usually 14"x16" but can be any size large enough to accommodate a place setting. They may be square instead of a rectangle. Orphan blocks, a block you've always wanted to make but hadn't yet (this is great practice!), strip piecing, etc. I usually use cotton batting I have left over and a solid backing. Practice a new quilting technique-these are a great size to work with! I practiced using rulerwork with my ruler foot and rulers on the light green placemat. Try some applique! Bind as you would a quilt. Voilá! You are done!”

UPDATE AS OF JANUARY 31, 2025:

161!! That’s how many placemats Guild members have made at the suggestion of Christine Shevock, who collected them at Studio and our potluck on February 11. You can almost see the Meals on Wheels participants smiling as they are having a bright spot in their day on Valentine's Day!! Christine says it inspires her to make some more for them for July.

We received a grateful letter of thanks from Meals on Wheels of Lancaster as follows:

To Christine and the Red Rose Quilt Guild,

Thank you for your donation of placemats for our clients! We plan to distribute your beautiful placemats on Valentine's Day, they will certainly bring a smile to MANY neighbors in our community.

Attached is a picture of some of our volunteers admiring your work. We really appreciate you thinking of Meals on Wheels of Lancaster and our clients; thank you again for your generous donation.

Lynsey Witmer, General Manager

Meals on Wheels of Lancaster

2024 Comfort Quilt Workshop

Jeanne Riley, who among her many hats is our Comfort Quilt Production Coordinator had this to say following our October 8, 2024 Annual Comfort Quilt Workshop:

"Did everyone have as much fun as I did at Tuesday’s Comfort Quilt workshop?? Nothing makes me happier than a room full of quilters sewing, cutting, layering, tying, sorting, and chatting at the same time! Thank you so much to all of you who spent the evening with us - our meeting was a huge success, thanks to all your efforts! We have many quilts in the “pipeline” now, and hope to have most of them finished by our January 28 Studio, when we’ll divvy them up to donate to our various charitable organizations at our February meeting ."

Jennifer Funck, our Comfort Quilt Liaison with Charitable Organizations, shared her video and several photos of this event: