19 September 2014

     

Editor's Note:  This article was originally posted on the website for The Salvation Army's Northern Division which serves Minnesota and North Dakota. To read the story on the original site, please click HERE or to read other news and stories on the Northern Division website, please click HERE.

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Five years ago, we ran a story about a sewing circle in Woodbury that had reached a milestone: 2,000 quilts sewn for people served by West 7th Salvation Army in St. Paul.

Back then, group founder Delores Fitzgerald (pictured above) joked that “If the Lord leaves me around long enough, someday we will celebrate 3,000 quilts.”

The Lord has kept her around a lot longer than that. Last Tuesday, Fitzgerald and fellow quilters proudly handed over their 4,000th quilt (pictured right). In five years, they’ve sewn double the number of quilts than it had previously taken them 12 years to complete.

The group is called Eager Hands Quilters, a ministry founded in 1997 by Fitzgerald and members of Woodbury Lutheran Church. The group includes more than 20 ladies who craft beautiful quilts using donated sewing machines, fabric, thread and other materials. Some of the ladies quilt in Fitzgerald’s basement, others at the Washington County Library in Woodbury. Each quilt features the handwritten words “Jesus Loves You.”

“Goodness, I never thought we’d ever get to 4,000 quilts,” Fitzgerald said.

Over the years, Fitzgerald and the gang have sewn an additional 1,277 baby quilts for mothers served by the W. 7th Salvation Army.

The quilts are cherished by the people who receive them, including a cancer patient from southern Minnesota who stopped by the West 7th Salvation Army last Monday. She arrived with her sister and husband; all had dropped everything to come to Minneapolis for her cancer treatment.

     

“They were poor and had nothing,” said Molly Schuneman (pictured, right, with Fitzgerald), social services team leader at the West 7th Salvation Army. “They were staying in temporary housing at a shelter until they could find permanent housing. I gave them food and hygiene products. The woman kept saying, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’”

During their meeting, the woman noticed an Eager Hands quilt hanging on the wall. Incredibly, it was the 3,000th quilt that Fitzgerald had mentioned five years ago, not knowing whether she’d live long enough for it to be sewn.

“The lady said it was a beautiful quilt, and that she could really use something like that,” Schuneman said. “I gave one to the lady and her sister. They were literally crying. The lady looked so grateful, and said, ‘Somebody made this, for me.’ They couldn’t believe that people were so kind that they would hand-make quilts and give them away. For this lady to have a blanket that said ‘Jesus Loves You’ on it was immeasurable.”

Fitzgerald has also witnessed the quilts’ impact.

“A year or so ago,” she began, “when my son was helping me drop off a load of quilts at The Salvation Army, a woman came up to me and asked if I was the lady who writes ‘Jesus Loves You’ on the quilts. I said yes. Then she said I saved her life. She said she was homeless, sleeping in her car, with nothing to cover up with. But then she got one of the quilts. That is what this ministry is about.”

As you might expect, Fitzgerald had one more important thing to say.

“I hope we’re around for 5,000.”