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Community Corner

Stitches of Love—Part 1

Silicon Valley Quilts for Kids passes along hand-made comfort to local children who are ill, injured or abused, one quilt at a time.

Swathes of fabric in every color rise from floor to ceiling in the airy upstairs room of Eddie's Quilting Bee in Sunnyvale. Large, intricate quilts drape the walls, wrapping the five ladies who are digging through boxes of patterned scraps, iron-pressing squares of cloth and running colors through sewing machines in a comforting embrace.

It's April 23 and the second meeting of the month for Silicon Valley Quilts for Kids, a nonprofit group that has grown from 9 members to 22 since it first convened in September 2011. The group designs, stitches and donates quilts made by its members to seriously ill, injured or abused children.

“I was visiting a QFK club in Florida and I thought it was a fun group,” said Bonnie Stearns, the founder of the SVQFK chapter. “But when I got back to California, I found that the closest one was in Napa.”

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Stearns, a Cupertino resident and retired vice president at a Mountain View medical device company, floated the idea of starting a local chapter to quilting friends and began “with the end in mind,” contacting organizations that she thought would be interested in receiving hand-made quilts.

The chapter was recognized by QFK’s national headquarters in July 2011.

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In March of this year, SVQFK donated 64 quilts to children at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Three-dozen of those quilts were left for future patients.

This was the second donation made by SVQFK to an organization in San Jose. The first, in December 2011, sent 37 quilts to Next Door, an organization that provides shelter to women and children who are victims of domestic violence.

Stearns said she expects another donation to be made sometime in May.

“What’s great about starting your own chapter is that these quilts stay in the area,” she explained. “If you don’t have your own chapter, quilts can go to QFK's headquarters in Pennsylvania where they may be distributed anywhere in the country.”

The ages for children who receive SVQFK quilts can range well into the teens and even 20s.

“These young people might have chronic diseases or really bad burns, so they’ve experienced a revolving door of being in and out of hospitals,” she said. “For them, we’ll make more mature themes…no teddy bears.”

Each quilt is crafted with 100 percent cotton and signed by the principal quilter before being donated. Stearns said that much of the material is donated by local quilters and shops, like Eddie’s and The Granary, where the group holds its first meeting of the month. Anything that isn’t used is passed on to other organizations.

Quilts vary in size, Stearns explained, but are kept small because hospital beds "have so much stuff" and children in temporary housing need to travel lightly.

Check back for Part 2 of Stitches for Love on Friday, April 27.

Silicon Valley Quilts for Kids meets at The Granary on the second Monday of the month, and at Eddie’s Quilting Bee on the fourth Monday of the month. SVQFK can be contacted at SiliconValleyQFK@gmail.com. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact Bonnie Stearns at (408) 718-7753. Eddie's Quilting Bee is holding a sale June 2 and will give shoppers an additional five percent discount on fabric with a fabric donation to SVQFK.

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