The Crest A Lot of Love: Spokane Valley Woman Serves Community Through Quilting

By Colette Buck Current contributor

Surrounded by shelves full of fabrics, dozens of pattern books and unfinished quilt tops, Spokane Valley resident Lois Roos creates masterful works of practical art stitched together with love and passion.

“(Unless) you’re a quilter, it’s hard to explain,” Roos said, describing how she gets inspiration for new quilts. “You look at lots of patterns, but there’s one that will jump out at you that you like…so you think, ‘ah, that would be fun to make.’”

Roos grew up in a family of quilters and remembers creating quilts with her mother and sisters for big family milestones, like weddings and births. She only started quilting as a personal hobby in the late 1990s, and since then, Roos said it has become her passion and even a purpose after retirement.

“You see I’ve got a stash, so you pick out your fabrics and start sewing, and sometimes it takes years to finish a quilt,” Roos said. “Quite frankly, I probably have 50 (finished) quilt tops that are not quilted, but I do finish a lot of quilts.

Most of the quilts Roos worked on over the years came from service projects hosted by the young women's group at her church to benefit local nonprofits like the Ronald McDonald House, Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, and the children's hospital at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Other recently completed projects came from a quilting group at the Spokane Valley Senior Center, while much older projects stemmed from personal connections to loved ones and friends battling cancer.

“We always looked for service projects to teach the young women the value of service,” Roos said.

“Some of the things we did are (make) seasonal pillowcases and take them to the children’s hospital at Sacred Heart. We’ve also done small fleece-type quilts and taken them to Vanessa Behan, and we’ve taken small quilts and pillowcases to (the) Ronald McDonald House.”

The wife of a United States Air Force veteran, Roos also uses her passion for quilting to care for our nation’s veterans by producing quilts with her group at the Spokane Valley Senior Center and donating them to Mann-Grandstaff VA Hospital in Spokane.

The biggest service project Roos got involved in started as a meaningful way to celebrate a family friend battling breast cancer. While at a quilting retreat, Roos and several others decided to make a blanket for Joyce Gebhart, a friend of Roos and her sister who couldn’t attend for medical reasons. The group of women put together a flannel rag quilt and gifted it to Gebhart who took the quilt to every chemo appointment she underwent.

When Gebhart passed away, Roos’ sister and two of Gebhart’s daughters started the ‘Joyce Gebhart Chemo Quilt Fund’ to provide comfort to other cancer warriors undergoing chemotherapy. The quilts produced by the chemo quilt fund were free to recipients and funded through donations that came from all over the world.

“We would get together two or three times a year and make chemo quilts, and they were all donated,” Roos said. “We’ve given away hundreds of those quilts. I don’t make so many of them anymore; I only make chemo quilts if I know someone that had cancer.”

Roos said her love of quilting and carrying out acts of service came from growing up in a family of six kids with a mother who always tried to lend a hand to someone who needed it. When Roos was in the seventh grade, she volunteered her mother to sew four sets of white Christmas flannel pajamas for several members of Roos’ Girl Scout Troop without asking. Reluctantly,

Roos’ mother agreed to sew the pajamas.

“That was a sacrifice for her, but I grew up in the kind of house where if somebody needed something and there was a way to do it, it got done,” Roos said. “That’s just kind of how I’ve been my whole life, and that’s the kind of family I grew up in.”

While Roos taught both her adult daughters to sew, neither of them quilt currently. Instead, Roos said they do home decor, but didn’t rule out the hope that her daughters would follow in her footsteps. For now, the quilts Roos’ daughters receive come from mom, made with love.

“You know the amount of love that goes into a quilt?” Roos said. “That’s not something that you went out and spent $50 bucks on. It took planning, and thought, and then a lot of time to do…so there’s a lot of love that goes into a quilt.”

When putting together a new quilt, Roos said she tends to gravitate toward 1930s reproduction prints called ‘flour sack quilts,’ which use a specific type of fabric that Roos grew up using. The fabric came from old animal feed or flour sacks decorated with beautiful patterns that families could make into dresses or other textiles during a time of crisis.

For Roos, the whole purpose behind quilting is gathering with her friends to socialize and serve her community. The Spokane Valley Senior Center quilting group is a major part of how Roos spends her days, attending meetings on the second and fourth Mondays each month.

“Quilting is a way to get out, be social, and make new friends,” Roos said. “Quilting is not a solitary hobby. It might be for some people, but quilty is a very social hobby. It fills a lot of needs.”

As for the advice Roos would give to anyone interested in picking up the hobby: “Go for it. I have taught so many people to quilt. If you want to get into quilting and you know a quilter, ask her how to get started.”