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Elementary school teacher Maire Trombley faced a formidable task last year as winter approached: She had to teach Maine fifth-graders a basic introduction to geometry. To keep things interesting, Trombley combined these math lessons with quilting, teaching her students the basics of the craft and having them design their own squares.
After two blankets came together, Trombley donated them to the Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project, which solicits handmade blankets for distribution throughout the country. Trombley, who picked up quilting as an adult, planned to participate in the project anyway but was happy that she had “dragged the kids into it.”
Her students weren’t just learning math and sewing. They were learning to care about homeless people.
“The kids that did the project are the next generation of voters,” Trombley said. “By thinking about this as children, they will realize that these are humans who need sympathy just as much as everyone else.”
On Wednesday, this growing project uniting quilters for a cause came to Washington. The Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project, in its second year, brought hundreds of blankets to Capitol Hill for display before they returned to their states of origin to be distributed amid the holidays.
Pat LaMarche, an advocate for the homeless from Pennsylvania, said she created the project last year after she met a 35-year-old woman on permanent disability. The woman said she would be “the happiest person alive if they just let me crochet all day.”
LaMarche seized on the idea, putting out a call on social media for handmade blankets for the homeless. She ended up with more than 200 from a few states. This year, she put out the call again and decided to bring the blankets to D.C., where legislators — who she says have the power to help fight homelessness — would see them. Her plan is for up to 1,000 blankets from 47 states and the District to cover 19,000 square feet of Capitol Hill.
The effort is about more than keeping people warm, LaMarche said.
“There’s an amount of love in that handmade blanket that did not come from a store,” she said, “that whole idea that somebody made you a handmade blanket just because you matter.”
On Wednesday, an unseasonably warm day ahead of a predicted cold snap, LaMarche helped other advocates spread the blankets on the Capitol’s West Lawn, pulling them from piles of donations nearby. The coverings of many colors and fabrics made a carpet along Third Street NW. An occasional whoop erupted when an advocate recognized a blanket they had made.
Ann Laliberte, a quilter from Maine, said the effort reminded her of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was first unfolded on the National Mall in 1987. But while there was no solution to AIDS at that time, homelessness, she said, has a solution: more housing.
“We hope this whole thing will motivate the people with the power to build housing … so we don’t need to make more blankets,” she said.
The blankets adorned the Hill as the White House has put a focus on homelessness — and ways to end it — and as the D.C. region braced for what could be the coldest Christmas since 1989.
On Monday, President Biden announced a plan to reduce homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years. Among other measures, the plan laid out ways to battle racial inequity and build more affordable housing — at a time when more homeless people are unsheltered than sheltered for the first time since data collection began.
Biden aims to cut homelessness 25% by 2025
The plan was released days after New York’s mayor said he would force homeless mentally ill people into treatment and the mayor of Los Angeles declared a state of emergency amid the rampant growth of encampments in the city. D.C., meanwhile, held its annual vigil Tuesday to honor homeless people who died in the city.
“Every American deserves a safe and reliable place to call home,” Biden said in a statement Monday. “It’s a matter of security, stability, and well-being. It is also a matter of basic dignity and who we are as a Nation.”
As policymakers debate how to get homeless people off the streets, the quilters visiting D.C. poured their energy into a the blankets, which may have limited impact but can each help someone.
“It’s magical,” LaMarche said. “And for a cynical old atheist to use the word ‘magical’ means something.”
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