News

On October 11th, Coffee Creek Quilters held a fabric sale fundraiser for our prison quilting program. While most of the fabric for student quilts is donated, we do raise funds to purchase quilting supplies such as batting, thread, and needles for our classes and to pay for the maintenance of sewing machines. Our sale was a huge success; we are so grateful for the support!

CCQ volunteers work throughout the year, sorting fabric donations. Much of it goes into our stash for students’ use in the prison quilting program. The excess is set aside for our fabric sale. We gratefully accept donations on two days every month at Wisdom House, the small white building at the rear of St Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Wilsonville, Oregon. If you would like to donate fabric, please visit our Fabric Donations page for details and the guidelines for what we can and cannot accept. To make a cash donation, please visit our Donate Dollars page.

Coffee Creek Quilters volunteers made 40 quilts this year for donation to Camp Erin Portland. We made it a “challenge” and this year’s rule was to use at least one jelly roll or layer cake of fabric. We gathered on June 7th for a showing of the quilts and the opportunity to vote for our favorites. Ellen Freedman, shown at the far left with her colorful crayon quilt, placed first. Treda McCaw placed second and Marlys Carter received a prize for making the most quilts (6!!).

Camp Erin is a free, weekend-long bereavement camp for youth grieving the death of a significant person in their lives. Children and teens ages 6 to 17 attend an overnight camp experience that combines grief education and emotional support with fun, traditional camp activities. Sponsored by Providence Health Services and led by bereavement professionals and caring volunteers, campers are provided a safe environment to explore their grief, learn essential coping skills, and make friends with peers who are also grieving. Each participant receives a quilt.

If you follow the Coffee Creek Quilters program, you are probably aware that we teach quilting classes at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. Our students make quilts for distribution to foster kids, hospice programs, and others in need of the comfort that quilts provide. Did you know we distribute pillowcases too? Since 2013, we’ve distributed more than 1800 handmade pillowcases to organizations like Embrace Oregon, CASA, and Community Warehouse.

When we say pillowcases, we’re not talking about the plain vanilla pillowcases you can buy at big-box stores. Our pillowcases are made with quilters cotton in a wide variety of colors and designs — along with an added dollop of love and care.

The pillowcases are sewn by both students and volunteers. Students can make pillowcases in class while waiting for their third quilts to come back from the longarm quilters. These projects provide more practice in pattern reading and sewing techniques. Most of our volunteers are skilled quilters and sewists who just love to sew. According to CCQ President Gwen White, “Everyone appreciates the opportunity to spread a little joy.”

At a recent meeting of Coffee Creek Quilters volunteers, Linda Downey showed the group an assortment of quilts recently completed by our students. In the classes, each student makes three quilts; two are donated to various nonprofits and students keep their third quilts.

Linda coordinates the distribution of quilts to community organizations for CCQ. Currently four groups receive quilts:
Bloomin’ Boutique – for kids in foster care
Community Warehouse – for neighbors overcoming adversity
Emanuel Medical Center – for patients needing comfort quilts
Good Samaritan Medical Center – for patients needing comfort quilts

Linda mentioned that we recently received a letter from Chaplain Aaron at Emanuel Medical Center thanking CCQ for the quilts. “It might seem a simple gesture,” he wrote. “But offering people a hand-made quilt often brings them so much comfort and helps them engage their grief and loss. The quilts add so much to their experience, and often are a gateway to good story telling and thinking through a person’s life.”

Chaplain Aaron shared several stories of people who were comforted by our students’ quilts. Here’s one: “Just last week I supported a child who was sadly losing his mother. The quilt we picked out together was deeply meaningful to him. I shared some about the quilters and how they made it with people like him in mind. He said ‘wow, people out there are thinking about me?’ and then asked an aunt if he could sleep with the quilt that night as a reminder of the way his mother’s love will always cover him.”

It’s been a year since Coffee Creek Quilters once again welcomed quilting students and rolled out quilt kits, sewing machines, and other tools for the benefit of Adults in Custody at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. We started with 7 instructors, about 25 students, and a little uncertainty about how this new adventure was going to work out. Fortunately, it has been a fantastic success! Over the past year we have trained 14 new instructors; all are actively participating in our Monday or Wednesday classes as dedicated instructors or as floaters. Their tasks include checking tools out and back in, instructing students, evaluating their work (from “This stitching looks great!” to “You need to take this seam out and try again.”), and providing individual assistance when students are struggling with a technique or concept. It is great to have these willing instructors available each week to make our students’ quilting experiences even more enjoyable.

Most of the students who started the program in February 2024 are finishing their second quilt or working on their third quilt. You may recall that students complete three quilts over the course of the program. The first two quilts are given for donation and the student keeps the third quilt (or gives it to a loved one). We also have a cadre of volunteer longarm quilters who use their longarm machines to quilt the third quilts. We have had 4 students complete the program during our first year back. Two students will be released very soon and have requested a “release kit.” They will be leaving the prison with a sewing machine, quilting tools, fabric, and books containing patterns and strategies to continue their quilting journeys.

Thank you for your support and interest in Coffee Creek Quilters!

Coffee Creek Quilters is pleased to announce that, with the resumption of quilting classes at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, we are now also able to resume taking donations.

Donations can be brought to Wisdom House, the small white building at the rear of the property of St Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Wilsonville on the third Wednesday and Saturday of each month from 10 am to 11:30 am (8818 SW Miley Road) beginning September 18th. Volunteers will be present to accept donations during these hours. Donor receipts will also be available at that time.

Due to limited storage space, we will focus on the fabric and supplies needed for the classroom and release kits. Please review the suggestions below as you put together your donation.

• One yard or more 100% cotton quilting fabric. Think about what you would use for children’s quilts and comfort quilts in hospitals and nursing homes. Students also get to make a quilt for themselves or gift one. Particularly popular are bright colors, blacks and grays, and batiks.
• Backings are always needed.
• Cotton batting 45 by 65 or larger.
• Packaged precuts – layer cakes, fat quarters, jelly rolls, charm packs.
• Notions for release kits – quilting rulers, needles, rotary cutter blades, rotary cutters, cutting boards, universal sewing machine needles.
• Panels – students like nature scenes, bears, wolves, Indigenous themes.
• Thread.
• Quilting books for release kits – no more than five years old and no templates.
• Patterns – beginner to confident-beginner using squares, rectangles and half square triangles.
• Quilt kits – again, beginner to confident-beginner for release kits.

What to avoid

• Flannel, wool, cotton blends, anything polyester, minkie, fleece, homespun.
• Seasonal/holiday fabric or panels.
• Cotton pieces smaller than one yard.
• Quilt magazines.
• Polyester batting or smaller pieces of cotton batting.
• Sergers.
• Quilt frames.
• Sewing machines – at this time, we have enough for release kits for at least two years.