By Paul Leighton
Staff writer
—
BEVERLY — The Sew & Sew Quilters have been around for at least a decade, meeting weekly at the Beverly Senior Center and often donating their quilts to charitable causes.
But it wasn't until a trip to Vermont two years ago that members came up with another good cause to benefit from their work.
At the Vermont Quilt Festival, the Beverly group discovered the Quilt of Valor Foundation, which donates quilts to war veterans. Figuring most war veterans are men, the Sew & Sew Quilters decided to make quilts and give them to female veterans at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford.
Last year, the group donated two quilts and a half-dozen pillowcases. Now they have completed a 45-by-60-foot quilt with a patriotic flag theme that they plan to give to a nurse at the hospital who is also a Vietnam War veteran.
Sew & Sew has about a dozen members ranging in age from 62 to 89. They each take two or three blocks of the quilt home to sew by hand. Janet Barnet then uses a sewing machine to stitch the three layers together.
"We wanted to make sure the women veterans knew we appreciated what they were doing, as well," said Sew & Sew member Juanita Herzeelle. "It's going to be an ongoing program."
