Vera McCandless, a resident of The Neighborhood at Tellico Village, has spent the last two years, with the help of volunteer Audrey Cys, crafting a pair of quilts for her great-grandsons, Logan and Austin.
McCandless, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, finds memories in her stitching.
The quilts she crafted for her grandsons feature depictions of baseball players.
“My husband was a pitcher,” McCandless said. “Where we lived, he was a pitcher on our local team.”
Sitting and sewing is relaxing, she said. It also reminds her of making clothes in her youth.
“We used to have chickens, and the feed came in real pretty sacks and I used to make skirts out of it for myself,” McCandless said. “The girls used to say, ‘Where’d you find that material,’ and I would say, ‘I don’t know where they came from,’ but they were chicken feed sacks.”
For 13 years, Cys has been spending her Fridays at The Neighborhood helping residents quilt.
“My mom was here and she asked me to come down and help,” Cys said. “... She just said that the lady that started it needed help because she was brand new to quilting herself. So I just said that … I would be glad to come over and just give a hand.”
Cys’ group consists primarily of two quilters, McCandless and Effie Cook. She has had as many as six or seven at a time, with Bernice McKelvey joining in for the first time Friday morning.
“Anybody can come in here,” Cys said. “I’ve even had a man come down and sit. I’ve got a blind woman, Mary, who will come down and she likes to talk. She’s a social butterfly. She will sit here and separate all my pins, because I have pins that are for certain things. So like I said, it’s open to everybody.
“... I wish we could get some more people to come down,” she added. “We keep announcing it and we keep getting some new people in The Neighborhood because they’ve added more rooms.”
Cook sat at the end of the group’s table, sewing together strips to make a quilt for her recently born great-granddaughter. The activity reminds her of a time when blankets would be made out of whatever was on hand.
“It wasn’t all these beautiful scraps,” she said.
Cook’s daughter, Janet Brock, visits her mother every other day. Brock sat in on the group Friday, complimenting the work of those around the table.
“I think it’s having an activity that’s meaningful for them that maybe they grew up with or have done over the years,” Brock said. “The old saying is if you don’t do something you tend to lose the ability to do it. I just think that it brings back a lot of memories for the folks.”
The quilts the group makes are primarily given to the Village Quilters, who donate them to various charities, including local veterans and Habitat for Humanity.
“I think it keeps them interested and keeps their fingers nimble,” Cys said of the work. “It gives them something to do and something to be proud of when they’re done with it.”
Cys spends time laying out the patters and marking each stitch to make the process as easy as possible for those taking part. She doesn’t want to create any difficulty or barriers of entry.
While Cys began helping at the request of her mother, she didn’t have any plans of stopping when her mother died.
“After my mother died, my husband asked if I was going to stop going,” Cys said. “Well no. I’m not coming here for just one person. I hope some day if I ever end up here then somebody will come and help me.”
