From left: Pat Blood, quilter, Carole Nicholas, Oakton resident and quilter, Marge Hughes, Great Falls resident and quilter, Jinny Beyer, owner of Jinny Beyer Studio, and Lura Alsalam, McLean resident and staff at Jinny Beyer Studio hold up quilts for donation to Hurricane Harvey Relief Tuesday at the Sew-in. Photo by Colin Stoecker/The Connection
Jinny Beyer, owner of Jinny Beyer Studio in Great Falls, organized a “sew-in” Tuesday, Sept. 19, to make quilts for victims of Hurricane Harvey.
“When people have lost everything, a quilt can be comforting,” said Beyer. In the past she and other local volunteers have made quilts for Hurricane Katrina victims.
With all of the natural disasters recently, area citizens have taken it upon themselves to help out in whatever way they can, and Beyer’s quilting and fabric studio has found a perfect way to help out hurricane victims who have lost all they had in the recent flooding in Texas.
Beyer has owned the studio since 2000, where she provides lessons, and as a fabric designer makes fabrics with the help of an art studio and manufacturing in Japan.
“We offer beginner classes for new sewers” she said. “The difficulty is in the complexity of the pattern.”
Marge Hughes, a Great Falls resident, and retired quilter, was also present for the “Sew-in.” “It’s a wonderful project and I’m willing to donate time to it,” she said.
“If people can run an IPhone, they can run a sewing machine,” said Pat Blood, quilter.
Many people still sew by hand, but for this project and to speed up production of quilts, Beyer and her volunteers are using sewing machines.
Other companies and local people have been more than willing to help. Quilters Dream Cotton out of Virginia Beach donated a large roll of batting — the natural, all-cotton filling that goes between the fabric in quilt making.
“We put it in our newsletter and have received a lot of donations,” said Beyer. “When you give people a purpose, they feel good about donating!”
Carole Nicholas, an Oakton resident and volunteer quilter has worked with Habitat for Humanity in the past. “I have built houses in New Orleans after Katrina and in Thailand after the Tsunami and probably somewhere else after the hurricanes this year,” she said.
“The quilts make people feel warm and it’s cozy to wrap up in a nice quilt,” said Beyer.