More than 19,000 homemade quilts have comforted some of Scott County’s most vulnerable residents over the past 17 years.
Now, Karen Brix needs some help.
She and other volunteers are looking for a few hands to help carry on a tradition of providing warmth and comfort to kids at Child Protective Services, families in homeless shelters, new moms at Genesis, Women’s Choice Center and elsewhere.
Brix heads the local chapter of Project Linus, a national network of volunteers named for the blanket-clutching Peanuts character.
For Brix and the Project Linus crew, the work is an act of faith. Through all the years and quilts, Brix said she’s yet to see anyone wrapped in her handiwork.
“It’s the nature of the service,” she said. “We’re not there when the quilts are handed out. Some of these people are at a tough time in their lives, and the services are confidential.”
Interested quilters, or those eager to learn, may contact Brix at 563-320-4466 or email sixbrixt@gmtel.net.
Because the calls for more keep coming. On April 29, Brix dropped off more bundles to Child Protective Services in Davenport.
Through the pandemic, Project Linus volunteers have kept up sewing quilt tops. Hundreds are stacked in Brix’s Grand Mound church studio, awaiting quilters to stuff and bind them, a chore best accomplished with a long-arm quilting machine.
Eunice Grell has stacks of tops awaiting her skills on a long-arm quilter in her rural Donahue sewing room. Like many quilters, Grell’s hobby turned into an obsession, producing keepsakes for family and friends.
Project Linus was the perfect outlet for crafters who want to see their detailed work have a life-long impact.
“They need all kinds of sizes. When you remove children from a home, they come in all sizes,” Grell said.
For the biggest quilts, Grell lays the sewn quilt tops across her machine, trims the batting, then lines it up on backing material. She programs a pattern in a computer control, and her 14-foot-wide Gammill long-arm quilter gets to work.
Small quilts are hand-sewn by similarly obsessed volunteers. Then Brix and others fold, bag and deliver them.
“They’re used by everyone from a preemie newborn all the way up to a big, 18-year-old football player,” Brix said of the quilts.
Adoption ignites quilting passion
Many hands make light work, and Project Linus said volunteers can pace themselves to keep a steady supply available. Members have plenty of materials, including dozens of sewn tops ready for backing.
Brix drew her friend, Cathy Petersen, of Low Moor, into the operation. Petersen makes and delivers quilts, and recalled seeing them in use once at MercyOne hospital’s nursery in Clinton.
“The parents came walking up with their little girl all wrapped up. They picked one that they said completely matched the nursery they’d painted with the same color,” Petersen said.
Brix’s passion for quilting began when her own adopted kids arrived with quilts.
“All four of our children are adopted, and were older sibling adoptions. When we first adopted our two girls at ages 6 and 7, they came with what they called their ‘comfort blankies.’ It just touched my heart.”
Later, when her husband was deployed to Iraq, “quilting was my sanity, my obsession.” Her pastor introduced her to Project Linus, and Brix launched an Iowa chapter and the start of that 19,000-quilt campaign.
Those kids are now in their 30s. Brix has two grandchildren and a third on the way. One daughter has picked up quilting.
She, Petersen and Grell say the quilt work comforts them, as well as the recipients.
She’s got regular routes and recipients eager to have a ready supply on hand. Occasionally, like last week, they make special deliveries.
“I just delivered 185 to Andrew Community Schools. They just had a 12-year-old girl die in an ATV accident. I just cold-called the school and offered blankets since we had so many,” Brix said. “First they were going to just distribute them to her class, and the class of her second-grade brother. Then they said, ‘prekindergarten through middle school has 160 students. Do you have that many?’”
Their blankets arrived the next day.