The storage room was barely big enough to accommodate three people and two large trash bags Samantha Elkins and Sara Reed set on the floor.
Peeking out from the opening of the trash bags were the vibrant colors of crocheted baby blankets that the club they sponsored made to donate to John Peter Smith Hospital.
“It’s kind of exciting and to know that little babies are gonna have their fingers in all the little holes,” Elkins said about the blankets.
Elkins and Reed are using the blankets as the first big project of the NE Campus Needle Arts Club, which the two of them advise.
Six members of the club created 26 baby blankets over the summer to donate to JPS Foundation, who will give them to premature babies at JPS Hospital in Fort Worth.
The sponsors had expected to see 10 or 15 blankets be made over the summer. Reed said they were shocked when everyone came in with the blankets during the first club meeting.
“Everybody started showing up with all of these blankets,” she said. “I took them home to wash them because they have to be washed in that special detergent, baby detergent, and I counted them up and texted Samantha, ‘Oh my gosh, we have almost 30 blankets.’”
The project came about earlier this year when Elkins got an email from someone from JPS Foundation who was reaching out to clubs and organizations across Tarrant County and its schools to look for collaborative opportunities.
Donor relations coordinator Alex Bustamante had emailed any clubs at TCC that could partner with JPS, and the Needle Arts Club replied.
“Samantha and the club in general have been super sweet, and I am just amazed just with this new partnership and how well they’ve communicated with me and just how eager they are,” Bustamante said. “I’m just excited as them to see where this goes.”
The blankets, which are headed to the maternity ward of JPS Hospital, were made in many sizes and colors. The materials were chosen by the members to be the softest and most easily washed for the comfort of the baby and the parents.
“My kids have crocheted blankets that Sara actually made for them, and they call them the spider blankets because they look like almost spider webs when they spread them out really big,” Elkins said. “And so, it’s fun to know that now there’s gonna be other babies out there with their own blankets that have their own little nicknames and stuff.”
During the pandemic, Reed crocheted two baby blankets for Elkins, who was pregnant and expecting twins, as a gift for her virtual baby shower. Neither of them knew that the other could knit and crochet.
“She got them, and she’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I knit,’” Reed said. “And so, when we came back to campus, we connected, and we’re like, OK, well, we’ve got to start a club because surely we’re not the only two people who can knit and crochet.'”
NE student and club president Ashley Miller has been crocheting for five years and sometimes sells her crochet pieces. She said she was a little harder on herself for this project.
“I felt like I needed it to be perfect because somebody was going to be getting this, and it was going to be for their child, and especially for the kids in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit], I wanted it to be perfect,” Miller said.
Club sponsor Jamie Melton said comfort items like baby blankets are especially important at a young age.
“My nephew actually was in the NICU back in July … and I noticed this little handmade woobie thing,” she said. “I asked his mom about it, and she had said they gave that to Benji in the NICU. They would take it to her, and she would hold it close and kind of keep it under her shirt so it would smell like her. And then they would take it back to Benji.”
NE student Rachel Toll has been a member of the club since last fall and made five blankets for the project. She said knowing that the baby blankets will go to premature babies motivated her to make them.
“It kind of made me feel like I was doing some good in the world, and that it was going for a good cause so it wouldn’t be thrown out or anything,” Toll said. “At least someone will get it.”
NE student and club senator Emily Proctor has been crocheting since she was 8 years old and was taught by her grandmother. She donated three blankets, but even before joining the Needle Arts Club, Proctor led the crochet and knitting club at her church that would meet every month to do service projects.
“It’s wonderful to do this,” Proctor said. “It only takes a few hours of your day to make a big project like that for a couple weeks, and it can help so many lives.”
This semester, the Needle Arts Club plans to collaborate with the NE Cultures of Other Languages Club to make crochet and knitwear items like hats and scarves for JPS Foundation to give to homeless people during the colder months.
Elkins said the partnership with JPS Foundation will open more opportunities for donation projects at the Needle Arts Club in the future.
“I’m really excited more that we’ve got a contact with someone that’s gonna continue to be there, and that we can trust that they’re gonna take them to people who actually need it,” she said.
Proctor said she hopes the baby blankets she made will be passed down to the baby’s children.
“That’s not always the case, but as long as they keep the babies warm for at least a little bit,” she said. “That’s the job for the blankets.”
