Submitted by Jan Sernett
Carol Long, a long-time member of the Towpath Quilt Guild, Fayetteville, has a quilt in Denmark. It hangs in one of the 17 Danish homes of the Eden Alternative, homes for the elderly.
The story took place over several months and involved a number of people.
Carol’s son-in-law, Samite Mulondo, was born in Uganda and escaped to Kenya when Idi Amin Dada became dictator. Samite began playing his African instruments and music for the children who were in the refugee camp with him, giving them some joy. Samite continues his music fellowship today and has established a charity, Musicians for World Harmony.
For one of the fundraising galas for Musicians for World Harmony, Carol made a quilt of the months, called “What Month Is It?” designed by Pat Sloan. One of the men attending bid to win the quilt and took it to a silent auction in Atlanta, Ga., to benefit Eden Alternative. Karin Dahl, from Eden in Denmark, fell in love with it but the bidding went higher than she could afford, no matter how she calculated things, so she gave up.
The auction was won by a man who knew how much Karin loved the quilt and he gave it to her as a gift. Karin was moved to tears. She put it in her carry-on bag to ensure that it was safe — but she loved it, so she would have thrown away things to get it in her suitcase.
Karin and her team at Eden in Denmark decided to make the quilt a symbol of international cooperation among the Eden Registry Members in Denmark and are hanging the quilt at each of the 17 facilities for six months at a time. A logbook will follow the quilt so the Eden staff as educators may learn about the joy it brings to viewers from the comments written.
So ends this chapter about the quilt, but correspondence continues between participants, so this may not be the end of the story.
