Three Creeks library sewing circle creates items for those in need

While it is billed as a community sewing circle, the hand-crafted items that come out of the monthly sessions have an impressive range.

On any given evening, a dozen or so women might be working to help Clark County’s homeless population or nursing-home residents with dementia or local children recovering from sexual abuse. Their sewing might even help patients at a clinic in Africa or Syrians in a refugee camp.

“It’s evolved,” noted Barbara Ferruzzi, one of the sewing enthusiasts who organized the group about four years ago at Three Creeks Community Library.

When they approached librarian Barbara Jorgenson about using the branch’s community room, they were thinking about an open sewing night once a month. They soon recognized the need for charity work, Ferruzzi said.

Now the sewing circle, which meets on the fourth Monday of the month, makes items for local community groups and nonprofits. They don’t sew on spec; when they sew something, they know where the finished products will be going, Ferruzzi said.

Their community partners include Share and Friends of the Carpenter, which can distribute hats and caps to their homeless clients. Nursing homes and care centers can always use biblike “shirt savers” when serving meals to residents with impairments. They’ve made cat beds and dog beds for a local animal shelter.

A lot of their work benefits kids going through tough times, such as young hospital patients.

The Arthur D. Curtis Children’s Justice Center helps victims of child abuse and investigates their cases. Children are encouraged to write down their thoughts in journals; the sewing circle makes cloth covers to personalize those notebooks, including ribbon tie-downs providing some privacy.

The participants move a lot of donated supplies through their sewing machines, including surplus material from local fabric stores.

“A lot of this stuff would go in a landfill,” Ferruzzi said. “It’s all perfectly usable.”

Columbia Sportswear, a high-profile clothing company based in Beaverton, Ore., offered some bulky books of fabric samples that were never intended to be stitched into anything useful. After all, what can you make with fabric samples measuring 12 inches by 8 inches?

You can make quite a lot of things, if you stitch enough of them together. And the sewing circle had a lot to work with.

The decorations on the cloth were actually personal messages: “Hand-made just for you” and “Memories are stitched with love.”

“I wonder if these are labels,” White mused, designed to be cut from the piece of cloth and sewn onto a quilt or other gift.

And there was this message — “When this you see, think of me.”

It brought a smile to her face as White observed: “We’re totally anonymous.”