Hospital Receives Quilted Comfort For Fairfield Group, Quilt Provides Opportunity To Share Friendship For A Good Cause
An intricate doll house quilt hangs near the nurses’ station at Sacred Heart’s pediatrics unit. High-tech medicine and old-fashioned soothing.
The doll house, based on a scene right out of the Washington countryside, is filled with homey details: a lace-covered sofa in the living room, a family Bible in the bedroom, a box of Halloween decorations overflowing in the attic.
It’s a scene that fascinates and comforts families who crave a brief escape from worry, and staff members who care for their children.
“It provides a little bit of serenity in this hectic place,” says Susan Stacey, the unit’s nurse manager.
The quilt is the product of hundreds of hours of appliqueing, embroidering and quilting performed by the members of the Rock Creek Quilters of Fairfield. For them, the quilt provided bonding and friendship.
The Rock Creek Quilters began the project in March 1991, when they became inspired by the idea of sewing a progressive quilt. The members agreed to a few ground rules: No one could look at the quilt unless it was her turn to work on it. No one could remove another quilter’s work. All methods of sewing and embroidery would be allowed.
The quilters also agreed to keep a journal as they worked. They would pass it from one woman to another along with the quilt.
Kathy Ottosen designed the doll house, sewed fabric wallpaper into all the rooms, and added front and back porches.
When she finished, she wrote in the journal, “Putting this quilt together was like having a baby. I don’t know if I want or can give it up. …”
But the quilt proceeded from quilter to quilter, one adding an embroidered treadle sewing machine, another a huge tree out front, another a cat to perch on the ironing board.
The house began to take on a personality.
In the bathroom Chris Mewhinney sewed a symbolic fabric bag of M&Ms to the floor.
Mewhinney’s friends all know the story of the time she managed to dump a 2-pound bag of M&Ms into a hot bath. It took her an hour to clean up the melted mess.
Later, Lori Hein added a family. She even sewed an “Auntie Chris” into the bathtub, complete with bubbles, melted M&Ms and wide, O-shaped mouth.
Finally, in October 1991 the dollhouse was finished. What emerged was a fabric portrait of country life as it continues to be lived by a number of the women who worked on the quilt.
A butterfly flits through the back yard. A basket of produce waits for attention on the kitchen floor.
Two sheep stand in the meadow. One quilter covered them with wool. Another bent the rules to shear the wool and weave it into a bedroom rug.
Mewhinney, who quilted the finished quilt top, lives on the land her grandfather homesteaded.
“When I moved to Fairfield, I found it’s only 30 minutes from Spokane, but it’s a different culture down here,” she says.
“People love to stop for a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. They even talk slower.”
The quilters, who live in both the country and the city, came together to look at the completed quilt and read aloud the journal passages.
Ann Wenning wrote, “Who owns the dollhouse quilt? We all do! It was built lovingly by so many hands, some with tears in their eyes, some with smiles or mischievous giggles. We added our thoughts and shared in its making like a family would, a family of quilters.”
The quilters were moved by the journal entries and delighted by the quilt.
“It’s such a unique quilt, I wouldn’t sell it for anything under a couple thousand dollars,” Mewhinney says.
The quilt did not find a home, however, until a new member, Amy Jo LeLaCheur, joined the group.
LeLaCheur’s son Tyler was born without a spleen and with seven different heart defects.
He’s undergone two heart surgeries.
LeLaCheur had vivid memories of her long hours at Sacred Heart and the comfort she found in gazing at a little heart-covered quilt hanging outside the intensive care unit.
She decided the dollhouse quilt belonged in pediatrics, where parents could escape into that homey scene and find a few moments’ solace.
Last December, it was installed there.
Says child-life specialist Vivian Wendt: “It’s in the right place.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Quilt show The Rock Creek Quilters will sponsor a quilt show at Fairfield Presbyterian Church Friday from noon to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $1; kids 14 and under are free. Music on the hammer dulcimer and zither will be performed by John Westerman and Dave Krell.