Every Wednesday, a group of ladies gathers at Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Priceville for a day of sewing, serving and fellowship.
To show the love of Christ to their community, the women from the Sewing and Serving Ministry create handmade items and lead serving initiatives, such as collecting backpacks filled with items for homeless people. These ladies enjoy the projects and each other’s company.
On any given week, about 10 women from the church and community come and go from about 10 a.m. until suppertime. “I’m making cornbread to bring today,” said LeeAnn McDaniel. “We like to bring food so we can stay all day.”
Together, they make things like fidget animals, chemotherapy port pillows and lap blankets to meet needs in the community. McDaniel makes most of the fidget animals, which they give to local memory care patients. She stitches items with texture onto the animals, including felt flowers, buttons, yarn, foam curlers and even bath scrubbers — “anything with a different texture or a different kind of feel.” And she makes sure they look cute too. The ladies deliver the fidget animals to residents at the Terrace at Priceville, a memory care residence in Decatur, when they go to play bingo with residents.
“They love these little things!” said McDaniel. “Some say they want them for their grandchildren.”
Helping caregivers
McDaniel has been a caregiver for years, and one of her motivations for being a part of this ministry is to serve the elderly. “I see that the elderly are often overlooked and mistreated, and I think they need us a lot more than we admit.”
Lisa Drew is also part of the ministry. Since she retired, Drew has found this ministry a meaningful way to spend her extra time.
“It’s a good social time for us,” she said. “We’re always making unique little projects that people in the group come up with, and we just enjoy learning to make things that can meet different needs in our community.”
Participants in the Sewing and Serving Ministry do not have to know how to sew.
“A lot of us may have sewn earlier in our lives but stopped it because we didn’t have to, and it’s just too easy to buy things,” Drew said. “It’s been an opportunity for a lot of us to go back and pick up this skill again and just to spend time together because it’s a great creative outlet too.”
Pat Dunkin, who now leads the group, was not always a seamstress. “We laugh because I failed sewing in home [economics class],” she said. “I never wanted to sew. My mother-in-law, who was a seamstress, begged me to learn to sew for my two daughters but I wouldn’t do it.”
Two years ago, some friends talked Dunkin into joining the sewing ministry and she absolutely loves it. “I look forward to it every Wednesday,” she said.
Reaching the ‘most people’ possible
The first project she worked on was sewing patriotic quilts. Dunkin’s husband is a member of Disabled American Veterans, and they wanted to do something special for this group for Veterans Day.
“And we don’t just sew, I’ll tell you that,” Dunkin said. “We do all types of projects so that we can reach the most people possible.”
Right now, they’re working on decorated mint tins filled with handmade animals. The American Legion requested these for their Christmas shoeboxes, and the group decided to make extra for the pediatric ward of their local hospital.
Another regular hospital project for this ministry is making port pillows for chemotherapy patients. These small pillows attach to seat belts with fabric fasteners to make the drive to and from treatment more comfortable. They delivered three bags of port pillows the last week of February.
Dunkin said serving the Lord through the Sewing and Serving Ministry fills her heart with joy. “Oftentimes when people see that you made something for them personally, they can’t believe it,” she said. “The appreciation on their faces just makes your heart happy.”
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