Quilted comfort for cancer patients sewn by dedicated volunteers

It's a crisp fall afternoon in the small Laurentians' town of Arundel and the parking lot at Grace Anglican Church is packed.

Inside the hall, 25 women work use sewing machines, steaming irons and roller cutters on fabric.

At the back of the room, about half a dozen women sit around a table.

Colourful quilts are draped over their laps and they giggle and chat. They are hand sewing the quilts' binding.

"This is the GG's table," laughs Danielle Lemay. "The gossip girls."

Quilted comfort

The energy in the room might be light and bubbly, but the women are well aware that each quilt they stitch will be given to a cancer patient.

They are members of the Ottawa-based Victoria's Quilts Canada, an organization that has gifted more than 74,000 quilts in the past 20 years to people who have been diagnosed with cancer.

Anyone can request a quilt for a loved one, says quilt coordinator Gloria Staniforth. 

She said the only reason someone is refused is if they received a quilt in the past.

A hug from a stranger

Elizabeth Richardson is the treasurer for the group and often receives letters of thanks from patients or their family.

"[The quilt] is like a hug from a whole bunch of strangers they don't know."

She recalls her favourite letter.

"It still gives me the goosebumps," she says with a lump in her throat.

"It gave him so much comfort, that he wanted to be buried with it."

Friendship and camaraderie

At the finishing table, Danielle Lemay says she enjoys the laughter and the "zenness" of hand sewing, but she also finds solidarity and solstice in volunteering.

She joined Victoria's Quilts two years ago, not long after her husband died.

"These women are helping me to go through it," she says, adding several of the other volunteers are widows as well.

"We exchange and share our lives."

Others in the group say the quilting is a creative outlet for them. Some say they've learned they have skills and depths of patience they didn't know they had.

A fulfilling hobby

"It brings satisfaction from knowing that we are helping these people and offering them some comfort," Gloria Staniforth says.

In her role as quilt coordinator, she sometimes delivers quilts in person. 

She says recipients are often flabbergasted that strangers would make them a quilt.

A lot of organizations fundraise for cancer, but this is different, she says.

"This is one-on-one. The person who has cancer is actually getting something. So I think that makes a big difference."

A precious keepsake

Pat Thomas, a spry 86 year old who has been involved in Victoria's Quilts since the Laurentians' chapter started about eight years ago, knows first hand the comfort a quilt can bring people who are ill.

When she watches TV in the den, Thomas curls up under a Victoria's Quilt that belonged to her husband. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2013.

"It just meant so much to him," Thomas says, explaining that her husband also knew how much she valued volunteering for Victoria's Quilts. "He had it over him a lot of the time."

"They are meaningful, these quilts."