Fiber Artist Meryl Ann Butler Creates Virginia Tech Comfort Quilts

To reach out with comfort and caring to her daughter, Meryl Ann Butler created a quilt that was presented to the Virginia Tech community during commencement

In the aftermath of the April 16 shootings, Meryl Ann Butler, Los Angeles fiber artist and mother of a Virginia Tech student, knew she wanted to “do something that felt better than crying.”

So she decided to make a warm, comforting quilt for her daughter, a second year student at Virginia Tech’s Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

As Butler explained, “Instead of being depressed over things I could not change, I decided to pour myself into the joys of playing with fabric, colors and threads.”

Author of the recent 90-Minute Quilts: 15+ Projects You Can Stitch in an Afternoon, Butler used her timesaving techniques to quickly create the quilt for her daughter. She also set out to create a more complex fiber art wallhanging to present to the university, at the suggestion of Jeff Pollack, president of the Print Concepts Inc., the only U.S. manufacturer of collegiate print textiles.

Upon hearing Butler’s project idea and concern for her daughter, Pollack could immediately and profoundly relate.

“I know what you are going through -- my son was in the World Trade Center on 9-11. Thank God he got out,” Pollack said.

The fiber art wallhanging, entitled “Hugs for Hokies: Hearts and Hands Reach Out to Virginia Tech,” was presented to the campus community during commencement on May 11, 2007.

“I was inspired to do something that would offer comfort to the students, faculty and staff at Virginia Tech. They don’t call quilts ‘comforters’ for nothing,” Butler said.

The “Hugs for Hokies” quilted wallhanging, crafted from over 450 separate pieces of fabric, has a border of outstretched hands reaching toward the central Virginia Tech school logo. The quilt is embellished with many tiny hearts, to remind the Hokies of the love being sent to them in this challenging time.

Both Hugs for Hokies and the quilt for Butler’s daughter were on display at the 2007 International Quilt Market in Salt Lake City, UT.

At the event, Butler distributed information about the Hokie Memorial Fund, established by the university to aid in the healing process. This fund will assist victims and their families, provide grief counseling and sponsor memorials. Contributions may be made to the Hokie Memorial Fund or to specific Hokie Spirit Scholarship Funds in the name of each of the victims. Checks made payable to Virginia Tech Foundation Inc. may be sent to: Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, University Development (0336), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. For more information, call the Office of Development at 1-800-533-1144.

Butler was faculty advisor and designer of the Anti-Apartheid: Love for All Mankind Quilt, now in the collection of the Hon. Nelson Mandela and also created the First U.S.- Soviet Children’s Peace Quilt Exchange Project in 1987-88, a historic and reciprocal exchange chronicled in the media of both countries.

Reprinted from SQE Professional, June 2007