Suffolk tornado inspires a comforting gift of quilts

SUFFOLK

Thick quilts stacked higher than the woman who collected them sit on store shelves - flannel and fleece, pieced and stripped, flowered and speckled.

Cowboys wrangle a whirling tornado on a smallish one made for a child. Some of the ladies weren't quite sure about that one.

Cynthia Cossu was. "You've got to laugh about the situation. What else are you going to do?"

Cossu sat in the downtown quilting shop Ladybug, the child's quilt spread over her lap and three others folded nearby. These are just a sampling of the patchwork donated by quilters across Virginia since tornadoes destroyed 49 homes and badly damaged 90 in Suffolk more than seven months ago.

Cossu wants to get at least one to every affected household by Christmas. So far, though, she and Mary Beth Dodd, owner of The Quilting Bee in Chesapeake, haven't been able to.

They said they tried the Suffolk Red Cross. But for privacy reasons the organization can't give out client names, said Ashley Greene, the agency's development director. Also, there may be families who didn't seek help from the Red Cross who could use one, she said.

Cossu and Dodd, who coordinated the effort, have a list of streets touched by the tornado but said it would be impractical to try to find the victims themselves.

So the quilts sit on the shelves at Ladybug at 600 W. Washington St., all sorts and sizes, for anyone who lost his or her home.

Cossu said people who want one should call first and bring a photo ID. "It's time," she said. "We need them to get them while it's cold."

There were 101 quilts at last count; they started arriving soon after Dodd sent out a call for them this spring.

They continue to trickle in, said Cossu, who made her first quilt 25 years ago at age 12. It was an Irish chain taken from a book called Quilt in a Day. "I thought I would have it done in a day. It was not a day. It was months."

Cossu has stitched them ever since. But she has very few at home.

"It means so much," she said, "to make something and give it away."

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com