A production line of gray-haired volunteers, fueled by a giant urn of coffee, busily churn out about a dozen bedrolls inside First Methodist Church’s Outreach Center in downtown Mesa.
This Thursday, the Ugly Quilt Group will celebrate a milestone – stitching 18,000 sleeping bags since 1990 for the Mesa Salvation Army, local churches and charities to pass out to homeless men, women and children. The group starts their work in October and ends in March because many of the volunteers are winter visitors who begin to return home in April.
“We’re tying the blanket that’s underneath so that it won’t move around,” explained Ruth Rowzer, who was stitching at one of the tables on a recent Thursday “And then we’ll flip it and tie the sides or do a stitch on the sides so that they’ll have about a 30-inch opening to crawl down (inside), so they won’t lose their covers. It’s all stitched on the bottom and on the side.”
At age 95, Rowzer is the group’s oldest volunteer. She said she’s been coming every Thursday for at least 15 years and maybe even longer – she can’t recall…