Giving the gift of warmth

COEUR d'ALENE - To sell them would be sacrilege.

Downright wrong, Bea Hardwood says. Even the idea of it is enough to make her upset.

"No, no, God, no, that's what I'm trying to get away from," she says, and when she thinks about it some more she adds, "No, no, no. I couldn't, I just couldn't. And I won't. And that's what makes them so special."

What makes the quilts so special, all 400 of them and counting, is that Bea gives them away.

She makes them first; twin-sized blankets in any sort of mishmash of patterns and colors in the basement of her Dalton Gardens home, and then gives them away.

The one requirement is that the recipient need it.

No price, no special requests, the people to whom Bea hands over her homemade gifts are people who are undergoing chemotherapy, who become extremely sensitive to cold, or families who've been burned out of their homes.

"I've never done it and I hope I never will," she said of charging a price. "It's one human being to another, that's all it is."

Her latest delivery - actually her husband, Bob, does the delivering ("I got him trained," Bea says) - was earlier this week to the Hospice of North Idaho.

Actually, she used to charge. When the couple lived in Everett, Wash., and Bea worked for Boeing in 1985, she used to charge coworkers $35 for the type of blankets she quilted called Quillows, which have a pillow attached, and were selling in the stores for $90

But she gave her profits then to the local food bank.

Later, they moved to Dalton Gardens, and Bea, who doesn't even like to sew, remembers a quote from Oprah Winfrey that inspired her to start giving them away.

"She said, 'If you can ever do anything for anyone else, do it,'" Bea says.

So she did. And her basement is her war room. Boxes of scrap patterns, a dozen finished quilts, stacked on shelves, and walls full of photos of people, cats, babies, nestled in their quilts.

"It's nothing heroic," she says. "It's just, I don't know, it's just who needs a little bit of comfort?"

She doesn't know how many hours she spends a week on them, or how many cancer patients who she gifted have since passed on.

Word of mouth - through churches, friends, family and the Eagles Club in Coeur d'Alene, where she's a member - get the word out who might need one.

"I gave up golf, I don't drink, I gave up those cigarettes, a long, long time ago," she says. "It's something that keeps me out of trouble."

Bob, her now trained husband, jumped on board after one of their first deliveries years ago to a family that was visiting a church after their garage with all their possessions burned down. The daughter asked the couple why her family deserved such a nice gift. That hit home. Now he irons crumpled pattern pieces while he watches football.

Four hundred quilts later, and no thoughts of quitting.

"It's doing something for someone when they least expect it," Bea says. "It's kind of fun. It's seeing the faces of the people who get them."

You can't put a price on it.