A quilt can be a creation of beauty pieced together from forgotten fabric scraps and torn, unwanted cloth. East County’s Kim Ruby, as founder of Kingdom Quilters a little over two years ago, knows a lot about stitching together a beautiful endeavor that redeems forgotten, unappreciated pieces of life at deep levels of meaningful craft.
A quilt can be a creation of beauty pieced together from forgotten fabric scraps and torn, unwanted cloth. East County’s Kim Ruby, as founder of Kingdom Quilters a little over two years ago, knows a lot about stitching together a beautiful endeavor that redeems forgotten, unappreciated pieces of life at deep levels of meaningful craft.
Members and friends of Kingdom Quilters just returned from Guatemala for the group’s second journey there in charity mission work. The group delivered quilts, love and comfort to an impoverished, isolated mountain area where, according to Ruby, “tourists never go, into the highlands of Guatemala.”
The entire charitable enterprise has been unpredictable and surprising at every turn. Halloween 2014 should have been a typical autumn holiday for the extended Ruby family. But an ominous phone call from one of Kim Ruby’s physicians intruded. The diagnosis was alarming and unexpected. With 25 years in the health, nutrition and wellness field, 15 of those as a certified nutritionist, and with no prior family history whatsoever of malignancies, Kim Ruby had contracted uterine cancer.
Ruby was scheduled in for major oncology surgery at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital. She had previously provided nutritional counseling to many client-patients diagnosed with cancer. Her serious Christian faith sustained her through the initial shock and reconfiguring of plans.
Her reaction, after tearfully praying with family members, was based in her beliefs. “I thought I can become a better nutritionist for my patients from my journey through cancer, because I will be in the trenches with them,” Ruby recounted.
She and her family members prayed, “Please teach us how to serve others when this is over, however this ends.”
Ruby continued, “I had to grieve the loss of my own health.”
Her operation was on December 4, 2014. And beforehand she received a very special gift of comfort — a handmade quilt with squares of cloth bearing personalized messages of love, hope and prayer from those who assembled the quilt.
Ruby awoke to reassuring words from her surgeon. She said there cannot be anything much better than hearing, “We got it all.”
She was profoundly grateful, asking in prayer, “Now, God what do you want me to do?”
Ruby followed her own cancer protocol for patients pre- and post-surgery. Although predicted to need six to eight weeks of recovery, she was back to work in two weeks. She explained that she was eager for her new cancer-free existence.
Not that her recovery was easy. Ruby said that she felt “scrambled inside,” with abdominal swelling and burning sensations. “I interpreted the pain as a sign of healing, though,” she said. “This hurt was healing that was entering into my body.”
“What is the lesson here?” Ruby wanted to know. She and her retired Navy aviator husband, Brandon, took his father on a Caribbean ship cruise to celebrate the older man’s 80th birthday. On the last night of the cruise, Ruby heard an assembly of women making “lots of noise” in the ship conference room, and she was intrigued enough to investigate.
“There were quilts all over, and sewing machines, and all this aboard ship,” Ruby said. These were a group of Texas ladies. “They were having so much fun making quilts,” she recalled. “I didn’t know that was possible.” The Texans explained they were on a quilting cruise.
Ruby spoke with one of those women, Deb Luttrell, and told her story of cancer survival. “Have you ever thought about making and donating quilts for charitable work?” Ruby inquired. Luttrell replied that she’d thought about it but didn’t know whom to approach or how to proceed.
Subsequently, Luttrell did one thing afterward. She blogged about her chance encounter with Ruby and their ensuing discussion.
Soon after, Ruby began receiving contacts and quilts from all over the country. “Quilting is almost a subculture in America, and quilters are the most generous women,” Ruby stated. Ruby was sent more than 200 beautiful quilts in six months from Texas quilters.
Serendipity, divine intention, Ruby’s creative imagination?
Ruby originated Kingdom Quilters in April 2016, wanting to make an impact and serve God and others in her healing.
Carlos Merlo is one of Ruby’s fellow members of Foothills Christian Church in El Cajon. Merlo knew that Guatemalan special needs children were very often shunned, hidden, and neglected as “imperfect” human specimens unworthy to be considered part of families and of the community. To help rectify these great injustices and help single mothers with special needs children, he had formed a charitable outreach ministry through his Merlo Foundation, providing desperately needed assistance to special needs families in his native Guatemala. Merlo worked in partnership with a sister church, Mt. Sinai, in Magdalena, Guatemala.
Ruby thought to join with Merlo in bringing the quilts to those special needs families as a heartfelt manifestation of love and concern. That first mission visit to Guatemala took place in October 2016.
After returning, the first group quilting party back home in East County was held in December 2016, with about 20 women attending. The quilters pray over each quilt as they sew.
“I think of this as a ‘ministry within a ministry’,” Ruby continued. What does she mean by that? She described how the women who participate in the quilting are served in their needs by their companion quilters, as much as all the quilters are sewing to minister to quilt recipients. A woman diagnosed with breast cancer received support from the group, even as she assisted with design. A culturally isolated Malaysian woman and her daughter began participating after seeing the Alpine Library session, with both mother and daughter welcomed for sewing lessons and related guidance for community newcomers.
Kingdom Quilters were much better prepared for this November’s visit to Guatemala. They knew they were serving women with special needs children from 23 indigenous Mayan communities, most of whom were illiterate. These were mostly single mothers whose husbands had left their families, and they were sitting in hospital rooms with their children for long hours each day, with little comfort and nothing to occupy their time.
The visiting quilters were three women from Alpine, one from El Cajon, and two Texans who came along. In Guatemala, quilts are known as “frazadas.” The Texas quilters told Ruby that before this experience they had never seen whose hands their handmade quilts end up in. Each of over 150 quilts and baby blankets was delivered personally.
The quilters also brought along 60 handmade “blessing bags” filled with comfort supplies for the hospital-bound moms, including toiletries and one very special set of items. Each bag contained a culturally sensitive coloring book and colored pens and pencils. The book outlines feature figures in Guatemalan dress and performing common local activities. And one page shows caricatures of the quilters bearing angel wings.
Members of the group engaged in companion charitable assistance during their visit to Magdalena. They purchased and delivered a month’s food for 23 needy families. Brandon Ruby is a former Navy aviator who is now a certified drone aerial photographer, and he offered drone photography to help the city of Magdalena, area farmers with agricultural mapping, and overhead photos of a hospital in Antigua. And they plan to do even more during 2018, including delivery of lap quilts to residents of an Alpine memory care center.
Kingdom Quilters, originated in a Christian setting, is open to persons of any or no belief system, with the only requirement a volunteer crafter’s desire to help people in great need of care and comfort. Ruby expressed chagrin that no men have joined the group in any capacity yet. “Men are tailors!” she exclaimed, in wonderment that none have connected those particular tailoring skills with the special needs families her organization serves. Knitters and crochet crafters are welcome at the sessions too.
“I admit I call myself a special needs quilter,” Ruby said. “I am the queen of straight-line sewing.”
Interested contributors can help support the group’s projects. Donations of money, of whatever amount, are appreciated to purchase food. In-kind donations of baby blankets, large drawstring “blessing bags,” and color pencils and color felt pens are also needed.
In January, Kingdom Quilters will be meeting in the Alpine Library on the last Saturday of each month through June. The quilters gather at 11 a.m., with lunch provided for all attendees, and fabric and sewing machines for those who cannot bring their own supplies and equipment. In July meetings will revert to Foothills Christian Church in El Cajon, to be held on Sundays after services.
