'Fabric in my hands'

Ginger Hain has been sewing for over 50 years, so she’s gotten pretty quick at quilting blankets to donate to Wee Ones Quilts, which gives them to the Kootenai Health Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Hain hand-stitches the quilting on each pastel baby blanket to make them soft enough to wrap a newborn.

Her daughter, Alesa Momerak, has been sewing for 20 years and uses a machine to make larger, more vibrant floor quilts, where a mother can lay with her newborn.

“I just love to quilt,” Momerak said.

Between the two, they make about 25 quilts a quarter to give to the NICU through Wee Ones Quilts, an informal organization formed and run by Pris Phillips in 2015.

Phillips was called to service through her passion for quilting and her love of God.

“God said to me, Pris, ‘What do you have in your hand?'” she said. “And I had fabric in my hands.”

Phillips had heard of groups that donated quilts to NICUs, and she knew that was what she wanted to do, but the process was a struggle. The Kootenai Health Neonatal Intensive Care Unit did not yet exist, and there was no real process in place to donate to the unit. Phillips eventually wrote a letter to Dr. Kathleen Webb, who not only turned out to be a quilter, but was head of the department. Webb understood Phillips’ vision and helped move her project forward.

“I was invited to tour the new clinic as it opened in 2016,” Phillips said. “And I was able to see the way the quilts are used now. They are presented to the parents as the baby is being discharged, and they’re used in training to emphasize the importance of tummy time.”

Since then, Wee Ones Quilts has donated about 1,000 blankets to new mothers.

“I often think, ‘How can they possibly need this many quilts?’” Momerak said, but the Kootenai Clinic Neonatology always needs more of them.

Phillips is selective about with whom she shares her vision for service. She has invited a group at Lake City Church, Block Party Quilters, to help make quilts, and they pray over each one before it's donated.

“I am really adamant that what we give to our NICU is the highest-quality fabric, well made, they’re cute and pretty,” Phillips said. “I’m not interested in poor quality that’s not going to hold up.”

Only 15 to 20 people have helped her make quilts in the eight years she has been working on it.

"Alesa and Grandma Ginger are some of the most prolific quilters,” Phillips said. “The quality I get from the two of them is over the top.”

Together, Momerak and Hain make about four or five quilts a month.

“It’s just really fun,” Momerak said. “We both have degrees in art, so for me I like really vibrant colors and she really prefers the pastels.”

The ladies can make something from anything in their cumulative closets full of fabric and the pair receives regular donations of more fabric for the cause.

“Pris brings us fabric all the time,” Momerak said. “It’s like Christmas every time she comes by. And she has such a good eye.”

“I just wanted an excuse to buy cute fabric,” Phillips said.

Momerak and Hain also make extra quilts for their own service projects outside Wee Ones Quilts.

“Honestly, I would keep making them even if they had nowhere to go,” Momerak said.

They send quilts through a family member who is a missionary to a homeless camp in Mexico for people in need there.

“To me that’s the most gratifying thing," she said.

Phillips also has a small surplus of quilts ready for the hospital staff to request them. She stays ahead of demand as much as she can.

“My part is very small and narrow,” she said. “I know the women who are donating and I keep it small.”