If it has to do with helping children, Mindy Barron is in.
Once a month, the North Carolina woman drives more than three hours to be part of the Augusta Chapter of the Project Linus volunteer work day. Volunteers with the organization make blankets for children in need.
“I learned that I didn’t have to crochet a whole blanket to volunteer,” said Barron, whose best friend had lived in the Augusta area in November 2020 when she started making the trip.
Despite the fact that her friend has since moved out of the area, Barron continues to travel to the third Saturday blanket making day at Platt’s Funeral Home in Evans.
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Sewing experience isn’t needed at all, according to Christine Newby, chapter coordinator.
At the blanket making day, 14 stations are set up. While some involve the use of a sewing machine or crochet needle, others include making balls of yarn from skeins because only one-third of a skein of yarn is used on a single blanket or sorting, folding or bagging blankets.
Barron said she volunteers wherever she’s needed, and she spent June 19 cutting fabric.
Christine Newby has been the chapter coordinator since 2019. Under her, the chapter has grown. In 2018, volunteers made 400 blankets. Newby set a goal of 1,000 in 2019 and hoped for 2,020 in 2020.
Newby had great plans to link blankets with military families in 2020. She wanted soldiers to hug the blankets and give them to their kids before they deployed. The pandemic changed those plans, but she still hoped for 2,020 blankets.
“Everybody was stuck at home,” she said, giving many of the volunteers plenty of time to make blankets.
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Newby created blanket kits. People would pick up the kits and leave finished blankets at her doorstep.
In 2020, area volunteers delivered 3,156 blankets. Prior to the June 19 workday, 1,542 blankets had been delivered in 2021.
Volunteers with sewing experience are welcomed, and volunteer Pam Posey has taught around 30 people to crochet over the past few years, including some pre-teens.
Blankets are given to many area organizations including Safe Homes of Augusta, the Burke County YMCA, Family and Children Services in Burke, Lincoln and Jefferson Counties, the Augusta Dream Center, the Ronald McDonald House and Platt’s Funeral Home.
Newby said the funeral home donates the use of their space. One of the funeral directors had an experience with a Project Linus chapter in another location. She would give blankets to children who lost a loved one such as a grandparent and tell them to think of their grandparent giving them a hug whenever they held the blanket.
Newby said she knows the power the blanket can hold.
She often wears a Project Linus shirt. She was in a fabric store once when a woman came up to her and told her that she’d adopted two children out of foster care 20 years before.
All the children had with them when they arrived was a bag of clothes and a Project Linus blanket. Twenty years later, they still had their blankets.
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“You need to know how much they mean,” Newby said the woman told her.
Newby said they can always use donations of fabric and yarn, and they rely heavily on volunteers. They are especially in need of volunteers who know how to quilt. Any organization that works with children and could use the blankets are also asked to contact her.
Newby’s email address is cnewby2211@hotmail.com or find Project Linus on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ProjectLinusAugustaGaChapter.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the Features Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com.
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