Anne Jones loves to make quilts by hand.

In fact, she has made more than 100 of them since being introduced to the art in a church workshop she attended in Pittsburgh 20 years ago.

She’s given most of her quilts to the Pediatric Department at Duke University Hospital, where social workers distribute them to babies born with HIV-AIDS. Larger ones have gone to Life Experience in Cary, which auctions them off to raise funds for their sheltered workshops for the disabled.

“I love being able to do good for others through pursuing an intriguing hobby that I love,” Anne said.

Her home is well set up for quilting. She shares half a study with her husband, Bill, in which she has all her equipment and materials – from books of quilting designs, to special cutting boards and tools. She can try out color designs and patterns by simply putting cotton swatches up on a wall-mounted quilt grid.She assembles the quilts on her dining room table.

Glaucoma almost ended Anne’s hobby when she started having difficulty threading the small needle she uses to join all the quilt pieces together. She only uses her sewing machine to affix edging.

Fortunately, advanced medical science came to the rescue through a delicate operation that relieved the pressure on her optic nerve by a surgeon inserting tiny nano stents into neighboring capillaries. “He was astonished when I demonstrated how easily I could thread my needle again,” Anne said.

There are other quilters at Carolina Meadows. Eight of them meet Tuesday mornings to work on joint quilting projects. Co-chaired by Bobbie Hahn and Irma Stein, the group donates its quilts to Chatham County charitable organizations such as Chatham County Outreach, Council on Aging and the Child Development Center who auction them off to raise money for their activities.

By Rita Borden