Homemade blankets provide warmth and security for Sacramento-area kids

Shhhh!

Don’t tell anybody but on Dec. 16, 853 Sacramento-area kindergarteners in seven of the lowest-income area schools will greet the day with a big surprise.

Each one will receive a homemade, cozy, colorful double-fleeced blanket of their own, lovingly made by volunteer blanket makers from Sacramento Blankets for Sacramento Kids.

Members across the local area network work all year sewing and assembling fleeced, crocheted, knitted and quilted blankets for the nonprofit group, whose mission is to provide blankets for children in need in Sacramento and Placer counties.

In the past 12 months, the group has completed more than 8,000 blankets to give away.

On a recent afternoon, organization “chief blanket gatherer” Claire Gliddon, 64, showed off piles of the blankets packed in bins and bags in every corner of her Fair Oaks home and garage.

Those destined for schools won’t just warm the 5-to-6-year-olds’ little bodies, she says. They also will soothe their minds.

“It means comfort right off the bat – security, too” she said.

“It is not something they leave at school. It is theirs forever, and they never have to give it up,” she said. This is especially important for those whose families are homeless or live in substandard apartments.

“Think about all these little girls or little boys who live with their parents in their cars or at a home with no heat. They will have this great blanket wrapped around them… Or the child who is going through a hard time, like maybe their house burned down, or maybe their father is over in Afghanistan, or their brother had an accident and they are just stressed. It’s a great comfort to them.

“What’s more, it tells them that people care. People definitely care,” Gliddon said.

Gliddon has led others for 21 years in blanket-making activity as the Sacramento coordinator of a national blanket group. This year, she ventured out on her own, starting a local-only blanket making endeavor for Sacramento-area kids.

She has 600 members on her roster – everyone from 6-year-old Daisy girl scouts, middle and high school students making blankets for community credit, scores of empty nesters and grandmothers, and lifelong sewers who have run out of family and friends who want their sewn blankets.

One of her members takes yarn to the women’s prison in Chowchilla every other month and comes back with 60 to 100 knitted or crocheted blankets each time.

While many of the blanket makers spend their own money to purchase supplies, Gliddon says increasingly she encounters volunteers who would do more if she had supplies to give them.

She’s hoping that Book of Dreams readers would consider helping her reach her goal of raising $3,000 to buy yarn, fabric, batting and fleece blanket assembly kits to hand out to those volunteers.

“I had one woman in a nursing home say we were the reason she gets up in the morning,” Gliddon said. “She had yarn, could keep busy and she knew it was going to children in need.”

While the kindergarten project is the group’s major project for the year, it gives out blankets all year long to some 50 organizations, such as the River City Children’s Center, Mercy Hospital – San Juan and WIC (Women, Infants and Children Nutrition program).

Blankets go to homeless shelters, the Shriners Hospitals, Ronald McDonald House, crisis nurseries and to sheriff’s deputies who keep them in their patrol cars and give them to children they come across in winter.

The group also responds to statewide or national emergencies. Members recently completed 200 blankets and sent them post-hurricane to the Bahamas.

Gliddon, who retired from a 30-year career at the Board of Equalization, got started as the blanket gatherer and maker as a way to honor the three women in her family who made a difference.

“One was my grandmother who taught me how to crochet at 16,” she said. “The other was my mom who volunteered everywhere, and my younger sister, who died of AIDS and loved children. This was a great thing to do to honor them.”

“It’s blankets all day long for me,” she said. “Someone asked me if I ever get tired. Well I have a T-shirt that says, ‘If I can’t bring my yarn, I’m not going.’

“I take yarn wherever I go,” she said, “making blankets while I’m waiting for appointments or wherever else I go. The need is huge.“

The request

Needed: Funds to purchase yarn, fabric, batting and fleece blanket assembly kits to hand out to blanket-making volunteers.

Cost: $3,000