Stitching Servants Quilting, knitting and crocheting skills serve people here and around the world

“When we were talking about starting it up, I had been knitting for years and years,” Penny Norton said. “I wanted some way that I could use my knitting, a gift God had given me, to serve other people and not just keep it for myself and my family.” That was how “Stitching Servants” got started at the Brockport Free Methodist Church 15 years ago. The group now knits, quilts, and crochets items of comfort and beauty to give to organizations here and abroad. Norton is now Family Ministries Pastor and her founding partner is Judy Pray, who attends the church.

Stitching Servants has about a dozen core members. Regularly scheduled meetings were given up in favor of specific one-time work projects to which more people can commit. The projects attract others from the church who may attend only one time as their contribution. Quilting bees have produced various quilts that were sent to Alternatives for Battered Women in Rochester, an orphanage in Mexico, Haiti, Rochester’s Open Door Mission, and Care Net in Orleans County.

Norton and Pray usually find a need that Stitching Servants can serve; or they get suggestions from others. At Christmas time, knitted hats, mittens and scarves were created for the Heart and Soul Church in Rochester’s inner city. The core members, plus others interested, knitted on their own. Items were collected in a drop box at the church. Some people simply purchased knitted items to contribute. A total of 157 knitted hats, scarves, and mittens, from many anonymous contributors, were delivered to Heart and Soul Church.

Stitching Servants have also knitted helmet liners for the U. S. troops, keeping them warm in the cold and cool in warmer climates by dipping first in cold water. The liners were sent to the Warmth for Warriors organization in Minnesota where they are sent overseas.

Materials for the projects are not purchased with church funds but are contributed. Pray gave an example of a woman who recently visited Brockport Free Methodist Church and saw a display of quilts by the Stitching Servants. She was a former quilter herself who was inspired to contribute ten huge boxes of her remaining quilting materials. “This is how God works,” Pray said about the ways that the needed materials are always provided.