Church ladies quilting for decades

There’s a great big stack of boxes at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Columbia Falls — taped, sealed and ready to ship.

The boxes are filled with a year’s worth of quilts, sewn for the less fortunate overseas, likely bound for Nepal, where recent earthquakes have left thousands homeless.

Every Wednesday, at least a dozen women from the church gather in the basement to sew quilts and put together layettes. Some of the women are in their late 80s and 90s and have been quilting for decades.

They try to make eight quilts in a session, which usually starts about 9:30 a.m. and ends about 2 p.m. Everyone is in motion, sewing, stitching and cutting fabric. Two women work on sewing machines, while the others lay out the quilts on big tables.

Team work is what it is. Once a month, they go to Pizza Hut for lunch, celebrate whomever happens to have a birthday that month.

Over the past year, the women made 251 quilts and put together 99 personal care packages, dozens of baby care packages, and many other items. All told, 68 boxes are ready to go to the Lutheran World Relief headquarters in Minneapolis, Minn., where they’ll be shipped off around the world.

Valerie Padgett is one of the women who volunteers.

“I’ve been coming here my whole life,” she said. “I was baptized here.”

Rosemary Christiansen is another longtime quilter. She came to Columbia Falls in 1955 with her husband Tom, who landed a job at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. plant.

The material for the quilts is donated. Everything from used sheets to curtains are transformed into warm blankets. Donations come from all over.

Xanterra Parks and Resorts recently donated a host of bedspreads it no longer needs for rooms in Glacier National Park’s lodges.

“These ladies are incredible,” Pastor Peter Erickson said. “They just keep getting faster and faster at sewing quilts.”

The work also allows the women to keep up on local events and news. It’s a strong fellowship of good will, with a little prodding once in a while.

“Hurry it up a little,” Frieda Brown tells some ladies putting together a quilt with a smile. “I only have one more left to sew.”

“You sew too fast,” they joke back.