Lakewood Ranch residents sew 100 quilts for veterans

A house is not home until you’re tucked under a cozy quilt. Quilts are much more than mere bedding. They’re handcrafted symbols of love. 

As the wife of a Vietnam veteran, Greenbrook's Jerry Stube wanted to send some love to the Let Us Do Good Village being constructed in Land O’ Lakes by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which supports military personnel and first responders. 

Stube owned a quilt shop for 27 years and still leads quilting retreats at the Carlisle Inn & Conference Center in Sarasota. She and fellow church members at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church are sewing 100 quilts for the new community of wounded veterans, Gold Star families and families of fallen first responders. Gold Star families have a loved one who died in the line of duty.

There are about 20 to 25 core members of the group known as the Loving Stitches, but before Stube joined, the women mostly crocheted. Now, they’re too busy filling a quilt quota. Each quilt takes about 100 hours to cut and sew, partly why quilts cost upwards of $1,000 per quilt.

With 85 quilts sewn, the group is in its final 1,500 hours. The project came with perfect timing for Esplanade resident Barbara Pfeiffer. After retiring from teaching in 2021, she decided to “do good” with all those extra hours. She joked that she never expected to make so many quilts, and the number is too high to put in print.

“I just really fell in love with the project,” Pfeiffer said. “My dad was in the army. For 20 years, he was an army officer, so we want them to know that we really appreciate what they did for us.”

U.S. Army SFC Sualauvi Tuimaleali’ifano III moved into a smart home on April 29, and Stube was there to deliver his quilt. 

Tuimaleali’ifano served with a signal unit in Iraq and with special forces in Afghanistan. At the end of his third deployment in July 2007, Tuimaleali’ifano was wounded and lost all feeling and function from the chest down. By 2016, he was the first recorded tetraplegic to represent Team USA at the Invictus Games. 

Courtesy photo

Tuimaleali’ifano can manage daily living a little easier thanks to the modifications in his new home. The hallways and showers are wider to allow for his wheelchair. The stove raises and lowers, and the cabinets feature pull-down shelves. The lights, thermostat and security system are controlled using an app. 

“One of the things I was impressed with was that all of the houses are handicap accessible,” Pfeiffer said. “The lady who’s there, the first house, is an able bodied person with two children, but her house could still accept the gentleman who’s moving in next door with a wheelchair. He can come over and have coffee.”

Every house is built to be ADA compliant, but each one is designed around the specific needs of that homeowner. 

“When he went to raise the flag in front of his home, it just brought tears to your eyes,” Stube said. “The whole experience was just unbelievable. When we went in the home to present him with his quilt, we spread the quilt over him in his wheelchair. Neither one of his hands work, but he put one hand on the quilt and he started rubbing his face with it and said, ‘This is so soft.’”

Not only are the Loving Stitches designing and sewing the quilts, they also keep an online inventory. Each quilt is photographed, measured, packed in a cloth bag, numbered and inventoried. The homeowner can scroll through the inventory to see the designs and dimensions and choose their favorite. 

Photo by Lesley Dwyer

Stube had already been donating to Tunnel to Towers when she heard about the village. She immediately sent an email offering to donate 100 quilts. 

“I got a letter back saying, ‘That would be fantastic,’ and so that’s when I started going, ‘Oh my God, what did I just do,'” Stube said with a laugh. “But our group at church has been a tremendous supporter and other shop owners too.”

Not all 85 quilts were made by the church group; some have been donated through Stube’s colleagues and students. A few were donated from estates because they heard about the project. But the number wouldn’t be close to 85 without the Loving Stitches.

“Even people who don’t quilt have learned to make quilts from that group,” Pfeiffer said. “So it takes them a lot longer to make it, but they’ve gotten them done, and they’re beautiful.”

Only two families are living in the village so far. The first moved in Dec. 17. To date, more than 600 families have had a mortgage paid off, moved into a home or are waiting for their homes to be finished through the foundation. 

Thanks to the Loving Stitches, Land O’ Lakes homeowners get something technology can’t offer, a tradition rooted in creativity and care. 

“Quilts are personal,” said Stube. “They’re a hug.”