A Quilt for the Community

Those are the words of Lesa Henson, a Holiday Farm Fire survivor who received a very special gift in time for the holidays last year.  

That gift – a hand-made quilt featuring all 50 state birds – was the result of collaboration and acts of kindness by many individuals in the #McKenzieStrong community. From the ladies who painstakingly embroidered and sewed the quilt, those who helped to organize and promote the raffle, the people who bought tickets, to the winner who wanted to donate her prize to a fire survivor. This is their story. 

Back in October 2021, MCDC volunteer Mary Sooh was contacted by the “Sew and Sews” – a group of women who get together at the Walterville church to sew their projects, help one another, and socialize. Three of its members, Rita Stadel, Marian Alter, and Ellen Johnson had collaborated to make a beautiful quilt, which they wanted to donate so that it could benefit the survivors of the Holiday Farm Fire. 

The beautiful quilt featured all state birds, hand-embroidered by Rita Stadel. 

“The bird theme came about because I found the complete set of pre-stamped birds to embroider.  I enjoy embroidery and took the project on.  I’m guessing it took about 500 hours to do all the birds & flowers,” says Rita.   

Marian Alter then volunteered to “do something” with these embroidered squares.

“I thought I’d put some sashing in between and make a large quilt. I went to a fabric sale with one of the Sew&Sow ladies and saw some fabric that said “ME!  IT’S ME YOU NEED!” and it was perfect,” she recalls

Yet Marian quickly realized that 50 blocks didn’t make a nicely organized quilt, so Rita embroidered 6 more eagle flower blocks to make up an 8X7 grid of 56 squares:

“I put the sashing on, found a good color for the back and for binding and gave it to Ellen. As she said, we prepared it for quilting as a group, which was both efficient and fun. While we were preparing it, we started asking each other what we’d do with it? We each have lots of quilts, and both Rita and I have a similar state bird quilt, so we started thinking more broadly. We realized that it could be a great fund-raiser if used as a raffle prize. From there we quickly decided that it would be the group’s donation to fire relief. (All of us were evacuated, one lost outbuildings, one had the fire burn within 15’ of her house.) From there, it was quickly decided we’d offer it to the MCDC. Mary took it from there.” 

Rita adds: “We decided it should be donated to a good cause, so MCDC was the recipient, hoping it would generate funds to help out. I’m pleased that it made some money!”

It took Marian around 20 hours to square the blocks, organize them, cut and apply the sashing and assemble the entire top. The Sew and Sews group also spent about an hour with 3-4 of them working to get it ready for Ellen Johnson to quilt.

 “It was a collaborative effort to set it up for quilting and Ellen had it quilted within a couple of weeks,” says Rita

“I do want to say that Ellen understated the effort to quilt it. To quilt something of this size on her machine is a full upper-body workout,” Marian adds. 

Over the next few weeks the team at the MCDC organized and promoted a raffle, selling tickets to raise funds for the community which is still recovering from the devastating effects of the Holiday Farm Fire. The tickets sold out, raising hundreds of dollars for affected families. 

Just before Christmas, the winning number was drawn at random, yet this lucky winner, who wishes to remain anonymous and had bought several tickets in order to support this good cause, felt like the quilt itself should go to a fire survivor. 

She asked the MCDC team to find a worthy recipient for this special gift, and so we did. Lesa Henson was known to us as someone who had lost not only her home, but her beloved cat in the fire that swept through the McKenzie Valley in September 2020. And when she was approached with the offer, she was extremely touched.

“The MCDC has been deeply moved by this gesture of support. It shows the strength and resilience of our community. The funds from the Raffle will be used for unmet needs of the Fire Survivors”, said Jeff Dehne, MCDC President.