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.

“We picked up seven carloads,” Ferruzzi said.

Those hanky-sized pieces of fabric are just right for making pouchlike bags that can be closed with drawstrings. Medical Teams International, a nonprofit based in Tigard, Ore., uses them in its global healthcare work. After treating people at a clinic, the medical team can send a patient home with a supply of medications or health-care items conveniently stowed in one drawstring pouch.

“We call them health kits,” said Joe DiCarlo, vice president of programs for Medical Teams International.

“We have lots of groups in Portland and Vancouver” that provide these items, DiCarlo said. “I couldn’t say exactly where each has gone. But I can guarantee they’ve gone to programs, whether they’re (clinics) in Guatemala, Cambodia, Nepal, refugee camps in Uganda or camps in Lebanon for Syrian refugees.”

Hand-sewn gifts tend to be very personal, often made for a loved one. But people in the sewing circle will never know who winds up wearing their products. It made for an interesting moment of reflection when Doris White worked with a piece of donated fabric.

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.”