Trinity Quilters Have Been Stitching Together Since 2004
It began when Barbara Caruana was assistant pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, 221 E. Main St., New Holland, in 2003. "She wanted quilts to give to those she visited who were ill," recalled Karin Freimuth, who said that three quilters worked together to create the quilts Caruana requested.
From that humble beginning, a group of about 15 quilters has now sent nearly 1,500 quilts through Lutheran World Relief to places as far away as Angola, Honduras, Pakistan, and Peru. The Trinity Lutheran Quilters meet each Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon at the church. Until 2020, they averaged about 100 quilts per year. Each October, the completed quilts are hung over the church pews and blessed before being taken to Bergstrasse Lutheran Church in Ephrata to be trucked to New Windsor, Md., and shipped to locations around the world.
Freimuth chooses the colors for the quilt tops from the many patterns in her room full of donated fabrics. The group accepts donations of cotton-weight fabric, and Freimuth visits a fabric outlet for backing material. "We tie quilts," she explained. Freimuth creates the layout and pattern for a quilt for other group members to sew at home. When the group meets, members put the front and batting together, and another group member uses a sewing machine located at the church to sew the binding.
Freimuth estimates it takes about 10 hours to complete a quilt. In 2014, the group made 135 quilts. In comparison, for 2020, after not meeting due to COVID-19 restrictions, the group completed 43 quilts. In addition to Freimuth, members of the group who worked on those quilts were Kathy Ashcroft, Ralph Bitler, Jean Brown, Martha Cressman, Brenda Dagan, Andrea Dukeman, Peg Friday, Carol Hagan, Doris Hunsberger, Kathy Lindman, Nancy Middlekauff, Jean Tressler, Sharon Shaeffer, Elaine Wright, and Theona Waxbom.
In 2018, four members of the quilters visited the Cover Girls, a quilting group associated with Bay Shore Lutheran Church, located in Whitefish Bay, Wis. Several years before, the Cover Girls had been trying to revitalize their quilting group, and when they found a photo on the internet of the Trinity quilts displayed in the church, they noticed a similarity in the churches and used the photo to promote their group. They sent the Trinity Quilters a copy with a note in 2016, and a friendship was born. Freimuth reported that during the 2018 visit, the Trinity group enjoyed a luncheon and a show-and-tell of Bay Shore quilts. The two groups also discussed production methods.
Because each box of quilts is barcoded, the group knows where the quilts have been shipped. "We know our quilts were in Beirut, Lebanon, when the port blew up (in August 2020)," said Freimuth, who noted that the group thought the quilts were lost. Instead, 25,000 quilts were found in the one concrete building left standing. "Our quilts were immediately used," said Freimuth.
More information about the work of Lutheran World Relief may be found at https://lwr.org. Information about Trinity Lutheran is available at http://www.trinitynewholland.org.
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