Local quilt makers are going well beyond ‘support our troops’ this week, planning instead to wrap our local vets up inside warm and fuzzy hand-made quilts as they settle into their new homes.
The Santa Clarita Valley Quilt Guild has invited about 28 veterans living in Habitat for Humanity homes to the Santa Clarita United Methodist Church on Bouquet Canyon Road Thursday to choose from 64 big bold quilts, all colorful, unique and intricately crafted.
The quilts are a sort of a house warming gift for military veterans who moved into newly-built homes in September, said Guild President Kristeen Dolan
“Everyone I tell about this gets so emotional,” Dolan told The Signal Tuesday.
“It is so personal a process,” Dolan said about quilting. “Because when you work on a quilt, your head and your heart are concentrating on the person who is going to receive it.”
Each quilt is bigger than the average room-sized rugs and costs between $300 and $600 to make.
City of Santa Clarita officials helped the local quilt makers out this year by giving them a $4,500 grant.
The matching of vets to quilts takes place Thursday night after guild members meet for their October Guild Meeting which begins at 7 p.m. in the church’s Fellowship Hall.
“We will have a short business meeting then proceed into the church Sanctuary so the veterans can choose their new quilt from the beautiful arrangement placed on the backs of the pews of the 64 fantastic quilts made by our Guild members for our wonderful Veterans and their families,” Dolan said.
Last year, after vets chose their quilts, they were asked to leave them with the quilt makers so that they could stitch a personalized label onto the quilt.
“There were many sad faces,” Dolan said.
This year quilt makers have been called in for Thursday’s event and are expected to attach each label to each quilt Thursday, enabling the vet to leave with their quilt on the same night.
Quilts that do not get picked to go home with a local vet will be personally delivered to a veteran at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital or the California Department of Veterans Affairs.
“Everybody wins,” Dolan said.
More than 6,000 volunteers from the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, some of which were the veterans themselves, devoted time over the past two years to build the Habitat for Humanity neighborhood.
The neighborhood, on Centre Pointe Parkway next to Bowman High School, features 78 homes built in three phases with the first phase completed in September 2015.
Last month, workers completed the second of those three phases by building 28 homes. The third phase is expected to be completed next year.
The land was donated by the city of Santa Clarita.
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