Quilt Featured: Nova Pieced by: Kathy Myers - Quilted by: Penny Dixon
Shown at: The 2018 Common Threads Quilt Show

Service Programs

We do several different types of service projects throughout the year, including Moms2B Baby Quilts, Columbus Honor Flight and Quilts of Valor. Members are typically able to piece the quilt tops, offer their services in binding or quilting the projects, or can join us at a Charity Sew event to work together on our Service Program projects.

In exchange for member’s help with our service projects, they will earn raffle tickets for a drawing at the end of the year.  Three raffle tickets are available for each quilt – one each for piecing, quilting and binding the quilts. Members can also earn one raffle ticket for participating in a Charity Sew event.  At the end of the year, we draw for a gift certificate towards workshops or retreats put on by the Common Threads Quilt Guild.

Moms2B Baby Quilts

We make baby quilts and donate them to the Moms2B program. Moms2B helps young mothers in the Weinland Park area (43201) near OSU. The program brings in doctors, nurses, OSU Extension professionals, academic researchers and many others in to help these young mothers.

They learn about nutrition, food safety, food choices for pregnant moms and young children, cooking skills and budgeting for food. They learn about labor, delivery, breastfeeding and parenting skills. They learn about about appropriate exercise and how to stay in school, or find a job. The program provides a strong support system for these mothers, friendships and a sense of family.  To learn more about the program, see their website.

Twinkle Schottke, the Program Director for Moms2B has visited us to talk about the program.  She delighted us with her stories about giving our quilts to the new moms, and renewed our motivation to continue making them.

How You Can Help with Baby Quilts for Moms2B

Guild members use their own fabric and batting and make a complete quilt. This can be done individually or as a group effort, coordinated by anyone who is participating. Members can join us at a Charity Sew event (when we are currently having in-person events) to work together on Service Program quilts.

In exchange for member’s help with our service projects, they will earn raffle tickets for a drawing at the end of the year.  At the end of the year, we draw for a prize.  

Dog and Cat Beds

We make dog and cat beds for the Franklin County Dog Shelter and the Capital Area Humane Society (and other various animal shelters) using scraps from our members’ quilting scraps. We have rounded up some donated upholstery fabric and stitched them into bags, members take the bags home and bring them back full. We then stitch them up and get them to the shelters to provide soft beds for our animal friends.

How You Can Help with Dog & Cat Beds

Your job is to take one of the bags home with you and use it to collect your quilting scraps – no pins, no paper, no trash.  Just little scraps of fabric, batting and thread.  When it is full – currently we need flatter bags with very little stuffing, sew lines through it so the stuffing won’t bunch up & then turn the edge over on itself and stitch it closed.  Viola!  A dog or cat bed!  

Different sizes are available so if you don’t generate beaucoup scraps, take a smaller bag or perhaps join with some friends to stuff a larger one. Dog beds should be no larger than 24″ x 24″ in order to fit. We’ll collect finished bags at each meeting, and get them to the shelters.

If you have beds, please do not bring the beds to our meeting room. They will be picked up after the meeting in the parking lot.

Past Programs

We’ve retired some of our Service Programs, but they’re still close to our heart. Here are a few of them:

Jefferson Elementary School

Our guild helped the students of Jefferson Elementary School with their charity work by making patchwork cover for pillows.  The younger students stuffed the pillows, and then the older students would sew them closed. The pillows were given to children at Nationwide Children’s Hospital on Valentine’s Day. Jefferson Elementary School has since retired the program.

Quilts of Valor

Our guild previously provided finished quilts to the Quilts of Valor program through coordinating & cutting fabrics, piecing quilt tops, quilting and binding many quilts. The mission of the QOV Foundation is to cover ALL those service members and veterans touched by war with Wartime Quilts called Quilts of Valor (QOVs).We retired our guild’s participation from this program to focus on our new program for Columbus Honor Flight.

Columbus Honor Flight

The Honor Flight is a gifted trip for our nation’s senior veterans to our capital, Washington, DC. It’s a chance for them to visit significant memorials, connect with fellow vets and share their stories.

The veterans are given a quilt on their return trip as a souvenir of the trip and our guild is now a part of this, to help welcome these folks back home. The group we are working with on these quilts is called HFC: Blankets of Love.

Donated Quilt Statistics

2020

  • 315 baby quilts to Moms2B
  • 3 quilts for Quilts of Valor

2019

  • 125 baby quilts to Moms2B
  • 6 quilts for Quilts of Valor

2018

  • 348 pillows to the Children’s Hospital through Jefferson Elementary School
  • 87 baby quilts to Moms2B
  • 7 quilts for Quilts of Valor

2017

  • 320 pillows to the Children’s Hospital through Jefferson Elementary School
  • 102 baby quilts to Moms2B
  • 7 quilts for Quilts of Valor

2016

  • 83 baby quilts to Moms2B
  • 3 quilts for Quilts of Valor
  • 254 pillows to the Children’s Hospital through Jefferson Elementary School

2015

  • 93 quilts to Moms2Be
  • 8 quilts for Quilts of Valor
  • 251 pillows to Children’s Hospital through Jefferson Elementary School

2014

  • 63 quilts to Moms2Be
  • 6 quilts for Quilts of Valor
    225 pillows to Children’s Hospital through Jefferson Elementary School

2013

  • 119 pillows to Jefferson Elementary School
  • 116 baby quilts to Moms2Be
  • 42 quilts to Quilts of Valor
  • 2 quilts to the James Stitching Sisters

2012

  • 82 pillows to Jefferson Elementary School
  • 32 baby quilts to Moms2Be
  • 1 quilt to Quilts of Valor

2011

  • 14 kids quilts to KidsNKamp
  • 5 quilts to Quilts of Valor

2010