Make blankets for needy children

        MOCKSVILLE — When members of the Davie Quilters Guild get together for a project, they mean business.

        Shortly after setting up cutting boards and electric sergers to make blankets at the Davie County Senior Center recently, they had an assembly line going. They worked fast and efficiently and seemed to have a great time in the process.

        At one table, members paired two pieces of fleece fabric to make fringe-trimmed Print blanket. Ann Cline was using a guide to cut fringe when she said, "Oh, you know what we didn't do? We didn't cut out our 4-inch corners."

        The last time the guild made blankets for the national Project Linus: Providing Security Through Acrylic Blanket — which distributes them to infants and children in some type of need or crisis — Cline took all the 4-inch corners home and made a quilt out of them.

         "It had every color under the rainbow in it," said Kevin Wilden, who heads up Project Linus chapters in Iredell, Davie and Alexander counties with his wife, Kim.

        They're in the process of starting a chapter in Rowan County.

         Kevin Wilden said Davie Quilters Guild members buy their own material. "They donate everything," he said, "and they did the same thing last year.

        "They come up with some of the prettiest fleece."

        Guild members made about 30 quilts last year and had enough fleece and flannel on hand to make that many more.

        Stacks of coordinated printed and solid fleece were spread across a table in the spacious multi-purpose room for members to make into blankets.

        A table over, Chris Vogler of Winston-Salem and Erin Davis of Clemmons were making flannel blankets. They rolled the hem around the fabric and sewed it with sergers. Vogler said they use fray check liquid to keep the end threads from unraveling.

         "Once this dries, we'll cut that off," she said of the end thread on the infant blanket she had just completed.