A Quilter’s Quiet Devotion at Sunnyside

The afternoon light filtered through the cottage windows as Kathie paused to look out her sewing room window, offering a modest smile. Quilting has been part of her life for decades—not for recognition, but for the comfort it brings others.

“I’ve probably made hundreds of quilts for donations,” she said, then added. “Some have gone to family and friends and people I know who are undergoing chemo or other medical treatment. I don’t keep count”.

Her precision comes from years of practice: careful cutting, matching corners, and piecing together patterns with patience and intention. For more than thirty years, Kathie has used those skills to create quilts that quietly make their way to residents who need warmth, reassurance, or simply a reminder that someone is thinking of them.

“I don’t want publicity,” she said, resting her hands on a neatly pieced quilt top. “That’s not why I do it. I just like knowing someone might feel comforted.”

“This Was It. We’ll Take It.”

When Kathie and her husband left Pittsburgh in January 2025 they left the home where their children had grown up. They had cared for aging parents for years and didn’t want their own children to shoulder the same burden.

Their daughter, a professor at James Madison University, urged them to consider Sunnyside. “Oh, Mom,” she said, “why don’t you come down to see Sunnyside?”

They visited and got on the waitlist. Two and a half years later they were invited to see some available cottages. After stepping into a small brick cottage filled with sunlight, Kathie stopped. “I walked in, the sun was shining through those windows, and I thought, ‘Okay, this is it. We’ll take it if available.’”

Another couple ahead of them on the waitlist was touring the same cottage that day. Kathie and her husband left for lunch, waiting to see what would happen. When they returned, the phone rang. “It was Kim Wetzel, the Sunnyside marketing director,” she said. “She told us the other couple had changed their mind. If we wanted it, it was ours.”

She smiled. “It was meant to be.”

“My Quilting Background Evolved”

Kathie began quilting in 1995, after a career that included teaching first grade, pausing while raising three children, and later working in adult literacy programs in Pittsburgh. “I loved that job,” she said. “But it was during the years when our parents were sick, and I had surgeries, and it was just five years of stress.”

One morning, she passed a quilt shop. “I went in and asked, ‘Do you have beginning quilting classes?’ They said yes, and there was an opening the next week.”

The class changed everything. Within a few years, the shop hired her. By the early 2000s, she had a long-arm quilting machine in her basement.

For twenty years she guided the machine by hand for hours at a time. As arthritis settled into her fingers, she adapted. “Eventually I got my machine computerized,” she said. “But the arthritis caught up with me.” Now she quilts using a modified “quilt-as-you-go” method she developed for herself using her sewing machine. “I can’t do the handwork anymore,” she said. “So, I found a way around it.”

“I Hope This Comforts Someone.”

After moving to Sunnyside, Kathie began donating quilts to residents in health care and assisted living. When she completes five or six at a time, she calls Cynthia Long, Sunnyside’s chaplain. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, I have quilts—take them wherever they’re needed.’”

“I’ve probably made and donated about thirty quilts here at Sunnyside this year.”

“As I’m doing it,” she said quietly, “I’m thinking, I hope this comforts someone. I don’t know their story, but I hope it helps.”  Kathie said Cynthia has reported how she has received smiling feedback from those getting her quilts.

With that in mind, Kathie said with a smile, “Okay, I’ll keep doing this.”

“Each Quilt Has a Memory”

Not all of Kathie’s quilts are donations. Several hang on her walls—carefully framed patterns with names like “New York Beauty” and “Rolling Crowns.” Some have won prizes or ribbons at quilt shows.

Around her sewing room, fabric is stacked in neat towers—patterns with flowers, stripes, stars, and paisleys. “Every piece has a story,” she said. A friend in Pittsburgh once sent fabric after a quilting friend, whose garage was filled floor-to-ceiling with fabric, passed away. “I told her, ‘Send me the black and whites.’ When I use them, I think of her.”

She’s made graduation quilts for each grandchild, using selvage edges and backing fabrics tailored to their personalities—like guitars for the musician and cats for the animal lovers.

On a high shelf in her closet are quilts reserved for future great-grandchildren. In the Bistro basement at Sunnyside, they donated sheets and pillowcases which will become quilt backings. “Nothing goes to waste,” Kathie said.

Outside, the afternoon light softened, settling into the room the way it did the day Kathie first walked into her cottage. She sat at her sewing table, guiding fabric through the hum of her machine—a steady rhythm built over decades.

“It’s what I love to do,” she said. “It’s my volunteer work. My comfort. My prayer.”