On May 3 the West Nipissing Quilt Club presented Linda Lafantaisie, director of the Horizon Women’s Centre, with seven beautiful handmade quilts for residents of the shelter. The group of quilters is provided space at the Comfort Inn to work on their projects, and it was there that they met with Lafantaisie not only to hand over the quilts, but to listen to a presentation on how the Horizon Centre assists women in crisis. They wanted to know what else they could do to help.
Lafantaisie says that the women and children in the shelter love the quilts and the gift was exceedingly welcome. “You can’t imagine how that makes them feel when they get one. We had little ones that were donated; little kids, they come downstairs in the morning wrapped in their quilt, so cute. They really love them. When we give them, we tell them someone made this for you, because they know you are here and you need comfort. This was made especially for you, and just remember all the love that went into this.” She adds that the recipients take the quilts with them when they go. Lafantaisie compares the quilts to a weighted blanket; “these are heavy, so it’s almost the same thing, very comforting.”
Kathy Harris, co-chair of the West Nipissing Quilt Club, said, “After hearing everything you just talked about, I’m really pleased that the women’s shelter was one of the charities we chose to sponsor. We’ve been a quilting club now for – this is the fifth full year coming to an end. It was at the beginning of COVID that we decided to do charity work, and then we had a full year where we didn’t have any meetings. This year we had planned a couple of charity days to come and sew on things, and again cancelled because of COVID. So, we don’t have as much as we could have, but then there’s a start to every project. Today we have 7 quilts that we would like to donate to your organization. Some of the quilts were made individually, some of them are group projects where we donated blocks. We have three members with long arm quilting machines so we were all able to have them professionally quilted.”
Each quilt had a tag sewn on it reading “Made with love, West Nipissing Quilt Club 2022.”
