Covered in Love

Want an easy way to contribute? Check out our monthly block drive!

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) quilting charity that provides comfort quilts to patients who pass away in the hospital.  I started CiL in the Spring of 2015 with 8 quilts and it has grown and grown.  To date over 1500 quilts made by over 200 quilters have been delivered to families in East Texas.  Scroll to the bottom for details about how you can help.

Read a newspaper article about CiL here.

In my day job, when I'm not quilting, I work as an RN on a Med-Surg floor where I see a lot of people nearing the end of their lives.  Heart failure, COPD, Renal disease, the kinds of things that people live with for years and years before they really start to die from them.  It's rough, for the patients, families, and nurses.

There are not very many good decisions to make near the end of life, mostly just difficult ones.  Unfortunately, while modern medicine can often make people live longer, it often cannot make them better.  When a family and/or patient makes the difficult decision to stop treating a disease aggressively and place things in God's hands, we do our best to get them moved to hospice.  Tyler has a lovely hospice facility which I happen to know several area groups provide quilts to.

However, sometimes the decision is made too late or the disease progresses too quickly and someone spends their last hours or days in our hospital.  As nurses we do our best for these families. We get them in a private room.  Steal chairs from the lobby so everyone has a place to sit.  Give them the code to the coffee room.  Still, it seems so inadequate to the situation.  Honestly, everything is inadequate to that situation, but as a quilter my first impulse when I see a need is to fill it with a quilt.

So, I'm asking you, blog world quilters at large, to please help.  Covered in Love keeps a stash of quilts for our hospital so that when a person is dying as an inpatient their nurse or the hospital chaplains can deliver them a quilt.  Placing a quilt on the hospital bed warms up the room and is taken home by the family as a memento and transitional object.

The first set of quilts were delivered on April 1, 2015.  For more posts about the project and why we do what we do you can read here and here.

I posted a long update as of Sept 2016 here.

Total quilts delivered: 1525

Want to help? Great!

Please email [email protected] or comment if you have any questions or if you would like my address to ship a quilt/top/blocks and THANK YOU in advance!  Most of the donations to CiL are in the form of materials for quilting, however financial donations are appreciated as well to cover the costs of supplies, shipping, and quilting services. You can use the PayPal link above or send a check though the mail.

One easy way to donate is to participate in the block drives. Every 2 months I announce a new block tutorial. Participate in the drives you like, skip the ones you don't, and make as many or as few blocks as you want!  Click for details HERE.

CiL gladly accepts donations of finished quilts, unfinished quilt tops or blocks, and supplies such as batting and fabric suitable for quilt backings.  Long arm quilters wishing to donate their services are also appreciated.  We are a 501(c)(3) and I will happily provide you a tax receipt.

If you wish to donate but shipping costs are high please send me an email at [email protected]. CiL can cover shipping costs thank to our generous donors.

Quilts need to be at least 45"x60", so they can be used by the families as throw quilts after they are home.  60"x70" is the ideal size.  Almost all our quilts are given to adults so please keep that in mind when choosing fabrics.  Quilts needs to be machine wash/dry safe!  Hospitals are NOT clean places so at the very least the quilts need to be washed once when they are taken home.

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