Thursday, Jul. 03, 2008

Volunteers make quilts for patients

Dee Saggars, director of pediatric care at Olathe Medical Center, was concerned when an organization stopped donating blankets to pediatric patients.

The blankets had been given to patients for comfort when they were admitted to the hospital.

“They need something of their own to cling to,” Saggars said. “I was just beside myself as to how we were gonna put them together.”

Saggars said she got the idea to begin making the blankets herself from her mother, Clara, who died at the age of 104 in 2007. The blanket donations ended about the same time.

“She told me I always had to be doing something, always sewing or cooking,” Saggars said. “It was just natural for me.”

Saggars and her five sisters began quilting together once a month. They’d share memories about their mother and create blankets.

Saggars then asked employees at the medical center if they had quilting materials to donate. Word spread, and Saggars soon found bags of fabric at her door each time she returned to her office. There were piles of cotton and fleece on her desk. “The generosity is unbelievable,” Saggars said.

Saggars and other volunteers have made about 150 quilts to comfort children through appendicitis and pneumonia. Hospital ambassadors have begun quilting, too. A group from St. Paul’s Catholic Church and a group from Spring Hill also share quilting responsibilities. They tie, add batting or create a colorful quilt top. A quilt shop in Saggars’ hometown of Baileyville, Kan., even began to donate material.

“I can’t believe how it’s come from the hospital to the church to a community willingness to share,” Saggars said. “I just wanted to start a little project I knew I could provide for children, and this came about.”

Because of the abundance of blankets, Saggars said donations have gone to “itty-bitty babies” and older adults in wheelchairs. The colorful blankets are helpful sprit-boosters, Saggars said.

“It’s just so exciting to see the smiles on their faces and their eyes brighten up,” Saggars said. Delores Metz works as a hospital ambassador and heard about the project in January.

“Every day I come home, and if I don’t work on the yard I work on blankets,” Metz said. “I think about what child will get the blankets.”

About every other month an organization donates blankets or toys, said Nancy Ingram of the medical center’s charitable foundation. Many want to begin their own projects or provide a volunteer project to children’s groups, Ingram said.

“It happens more than the average person realizes,” Ingram said. “Particularly in the winter months, people want to keep their hands busy and they think of their local hospital.”

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