A group of GateWay employees gathers during their lunch hour every Wednesday for a common goal - to quilt.
“It’s extremely casual, just drop in and do what you can,” says GateWay Community College coordinator of Fiscal Services, Andrea Williams.
The group just completed their first quilt. “It’s called a ‘Quilt of Valor,’” says Williams.
The “Quilts of Valor” program collects the quilts and gives them to service members and veterans touched by war.
“I contribute to the program, but I like to do it on a more personal level too,” says Williams. So Williams and the group decided to donate their quilt to GateWay Community College’s Veterans Services Center.
GateWay Community College Veterans Services Coordinator Manny Dallago decided to give the quilt to GateWay nursing student Shelagh Reyes, whose husband, an Army veteran, recently passed away.
“GateWay Community College is a really tight community,” says Dallago. “We come together to help each other out, especially when it comes to helping our veterans. We knew instantly who we needed to honor with this quilt.”
For Williams, the quilt had a veteran’s theme from the beginning.
“We worked on the quilt with a general idea that it was going to be an Americana theme that would go to a veteran,” says Williams. “And it kind of ended up with Arizona colors.”
It took almost a year to complete the quilt. When they first got together, there were some people who had never even picked up a needle. So Williams taught them. “And they did really good,” she says.
Williams was just four-years old when her grandmother taught her how to quilt. “We used to stay with her in the summer,” Williams says. “So all of us grandkids would sit out in the driveway with the quilting frames and quilt.” And Williams has been quilting ever since then.
This isn’t Williams first “Quilt of Valor” and it certainly won’t be her last.
“I live in an over-55 community and I would make the quilts and then on holidays, I would go up and down the street in our neighborhood and give them to anyone that was a veteran,” says Williams.
“I’d say, ‘I see your flag. Are you a veteran? And if they said yes, I’d give them a quilt or if they said ‘no, but my husband was,’ I’d give them a quilt too,” says Williams. “After a couple of years, I’d walk up and down the street in my neighborhood, and I’d see my quilts across the backs of sofas being displayed.”
Quilting is relaxing and meditative, Williams says. “I don’t worry about deadlines. It’s just being creative. I call it ‘slow sewing.’ We solve the world’s problems while we’re sewing.”
Williams and the group are already working on next year’s quilt. She says anyone is invited to come and participate. The group gets together on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. in the Center for Teaching & Learning on campus.