DATAW QUILTERS

Helping Children Feel “Sew” Special

story by BARB FISHER                     photos courtesy of DATAW ISLAND

In a softly lit classroom on St. Helena Island, a tiny wisp of a girl with pink and yellow barrettes in her braids carefully carries a folded quilt to a small, blue cot. It is a prized possession, with handmade squares of pink and yellow — which happen to be 5-year-old Arielle Brown’s very favorite colors. Every stitch was sewn with love.

It’s nap time. Her fellow preschoolers follow suit, snuggling under their own quilts. The room can get chilly, summer and winter.
Center Director Sarah Scanlan and Arielle’s teacher, Joseline Coronado, go from cot to cot, tenderly tucking in the little ones. The children are weary from a long morning of learning. Most quickly fall asleep. But a little boy reaches out to a 4-year-old on the next cot. They hold hands. This classroom is a safe place in a big world. As the children nap, Congress is considering a proposal for sweeping budget cuts that would strip funding from the Head Start program that is vital to Arielle’s school and serves nearly 800,000 of this nation’s most vulnerable children and their families.

But for now, a nearby group of caring ladies have Arielle and her classmates covered. Literally.

For 17 years, the Dataw Island Quilters Club has donated handmade quilts to preschoolers on St. Helena Island. Each quilt can take hours to a week to complete.

Over the years, the women have made about 500 blankets for the children. The women begin working each February to purchase fabric, design, measure, cut, fill with batting, and stitch dozens of quilts to supply every single child entering preschool in the Head Start program at the St. Helena Early Learning Center, 1031 Sea Island Parkway.

The center, with an infant-toddler and preschool program, serves families and children with limited resources; not every child could supply their own comfy blanket. Some are in foster care or experiencing homelessness.

Many of these children don’t have much, noted Susan Jorgensen, a quilting club member for 17 years and the group’s former longtime Community Service chairwoman.

“So, when they come into the Early Learning Center and they have their very own blankets and it’s really all theirs, it means a great deal to them,” Jorgensen said. “You might not think it’s important — a little blanket, but it’s very important to these children.”

The project began when Jorgensen visited another St. Helena preschool, since closed, and saw the tots sleeping under towels.
“They were scratchy, old towels — beach towels, bath towels,” she recalled. The quilters had already been gifting holiday quilts to newborns at Beaufort Memorial Hospital, but “we thought, maybe we can be doing more. We could make a difference. Children need to know that people care about them, love them, want to see them smile. The quilt that each child receives says that to them: ‘We care about you.’”

Scanlan said that the children choose their own quilt that they are drawn to by a favorite color or a cartoon character used in the design. The quilts stay at school and are laundered by the staff until the child transitions to kindergarten. Then, they get to take them home and keep them forever.

Each member of the quilting club pitches in to make the project successful. They shop for fabric, typically paying as much as $12 per yard for all they need to make more than 70 quilts a year. Center enrollment varies, but the Dataw Quilters always supply the school with extra blankets for children who come later in the year.

The project begins with about 20 quilters gathering on the second Wednesday of February in Dataw’s Carolina Ballroom. It is lined with long banquet tables for the task. The women will spread out the fabric, consult patterns, and cut squares to be stacked into plastic bags along with batting to make kits. Stitching begins two weeks later, and the ballroom hums with sewing machines and anticipation of tiny smiles.

The Quilters Community Service Chairwoman Mary Spillane and members Kathy Davies and Sue Mannheim will take the quilts to the school. But first, Dataw Island residents enjoy an art exhibit, with the quilts carefully draped from fences near the island’s Sams Family Ruins.

Spillane and seven other quilters then launder each quilt before delivering them to the school in early August.
“The kids love their blanket,” said Arielle’s mother, Rolita Perry, a teacher assistant at the preschool. “One of my students asks to take it home every day.”

Knowing they are bringing happiness and comfort to a child is what keeps the Dataw quilters diligently sewing until they have finished the last needed quilt. Twice a month, they gather in Dataw’s Community Center for a Sit-and-Sew, a quilting bee.
The room is filled with friendly chatter as the ladies work on their quilts. This is a group of friends: Ann Holden joined the group in 2004; Vicki Fraser started in 1998.

At their April gathering, Janice Sands worked on an ABC quilt, having cut squares from a panel with colorful drawings that represent each letter. The tiny owner of this quilt will learn that “R is for rocket” and “S is for sun.”

“The room typically is packed. Helping children is close to the hearts of the Dataw Quilters,” said Linda Robinson, who joined in 2016.

“If the love that we put into making quilts for the children of the Early Learning Center brings a smile to their faces, then it also puts smiles on each of our faces,” Robinson said. “It is all about knowing that we are making a difference in each child’s life and making them feel special.”