As many people know, The Community Quilt Project started right here on Daily Kos. It has, until now, provided a way for this community to share compassion with each other. When someone is facing severe illness or other hardship, we write messages to them and our loving words are sewn into a quilt for them. Everybody gets a lift from this. Check out our new website (made by weBranding) – and you will see all the work of the past year in one place!
Now would be a good time to expand the goodness and reach outside our immediate circle. An opportunity presented itself at Netroots Nation. I was looking for a charity that needed quilts – and Irma Resendez of Familia Unida – a multicultural organization in Los Angeles that serves people with MS and other disabilities. Irma had been looking for a source of handmade wheelchair quilts for some time...
Here’s what I want to do. I want to find a source of funding for, what I think of in my own mind, as a mini-stimulus/jobs plan. There are women, some with disabilities of their own, some without work, some on the Rez where opportunities are slim to none, who could make these wheelchair quilts and they should be paid for it. $100/quilt is what I am thinking.
There are lots of do-good organizations out there that depend upon volunteering – but here’s the flaw...when people have time to give, likely as not in this time we are living in it is because they have no work. No work, no money. Would it not be better to give something for the work of their hands? Think of it as priming the pump for something better to come... Also, quilting is not an inexpensive craft. Full price, quilting fabric costs between $9 and $12 a yard. Good batting is not cheap, either. And the time...this is a craft that takes time -- time to think good and loving thoughts, certainly, but time nonetheless...
Making the Love Catchers here has kept my little household going – and I am very grateful for the work you all have given me and my sister. I know making wheelchair quilts would be a big help to some women. In fact, I’ve got a growing list of women who want to do this. Some of them don't need the money and would donate what they earn to something good. Others really need something to do that will pay them something.
One has severe breathing problems – no job. She makes jams and jellies for a little money. This would make a big difference to her household income.
One is waiting for a kidney transplant – she can’t hold a regular job right now. But she is so creative!
One has always been a stay-at-home mom and wife – her husband is dying of cancer and she does not know what she’ll do when he is gone. She wants to do this to keep her mind off the worry – and to put a little by.
I don’t need to tell you what this work would mean to women in a women’s shelter on the Rez in South Dakota...
Let’s face it, when you are past your thirties in this country right now, it is very, very difficult to find a job. The deck is stacked against older people generally but especially older women. Well, when the deck is stacked, it’s time to rethink the game – get creative. Doing something to help someone else in this instance, for a modicum of pay, would make a big difference. And it's not just having some coin in their purses that matters -- it's a matter of feeling that one has done something worthwhile, that one is empowered to move forward with one's head held high.
Surely some companies would donate to such an effort – especially companies that make the materials for quilting. But they are not likely to do so unless a non-profit organization exists.
I am putting this out to the best brainstorming group I know – the Daily Kos community. Please let me know what you think.
Note: This would not be for women only -- there are some men who quilt and they would also be welcome. By and large, however, quilting is perceived as a woman's craft, something that is often expected to be given away -- and that may be why it is largely undervalued in the marketplace.