Local quilting group sending quilts to Uvalde, Texas

By Editor | July 6, 2022 |

Here are three of the four quilts that will be making their way to Uvalde, Texas. The North Greene quilting group decided to get together and join an online group that was trying to get a total of 800 donated quilts so everyone in the school district could be given one. Left to right: Pat Fisher, Linda Cox and Pam VanMeter. (Submitted photo)

By Carmen Ensinger

On May 24, the unthinkable happened in Uvalde, Texas when an 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fatally shot 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 others at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
Pam Van Meter, of White Hall, does quilting and belongs to several online quilting groups. This is where she heard about the project.
“A lady from one of my quilting groups, Carol Fleming from North Carolina, wanted to send 800 quilts to the school system by September,” VanMeter said. “They have had such an outpouring that they are going to give them to the kids, teachers and everyone who works in the school district.”
VanMeter also has a small quilting group that meets at her house once a month.
“We sew here at my house and I just reached out to them and asked them if they would like to do a small quilt along with me to send along,” she said. “So we will be sending along four quilts and then a lady from Jerseyville sent me a message and asked me if her group could send some along also so she brought me four quilts this morning from her group so we have eight quilts going out now.”
There was one requirement for the quilts – they had to be cheery.
“They requested nothing but cheerful colors and they would like to have something with stars or hearts on it,” VanMeter said. “No guns or anything to do with fighting or that kind of thing.”
The quilts themselves are more like throws than actual quilts.
“When you think of a quilt, you think of something huge that covers an entire bed,” VanMeter said. “What they requested and what we are sending are much smaller – 48 inches by 60 inches, the size of your typical throw.”
For those unfamiliar with quilting, it is a multi-step process. The first process is making the quilt blocks. Then comes the task of sewing them together and while there are probably several more steps in there as well, the final step is the actual quilting. This is done on a machine, which VanMeter owns.
VanMeter said her group only spent about two weeks from start to finish on the quilts.
“Actually, we can do them pretty quickly,” she said. “We can piece them in one day. Most of it is me getting them quilted in my shop since I still work full-time.”
Members of the quilting group include, in addition to VanMeter, Pat Fisher and Sue Vinyard, from White Hall, Sue Cox from Roodhouse and Cheryl Cook from Carrollton.