Warm Ears, Warm Hearts

Diane Solomon, founder of Warm Ears Ministry

It’s another free week, and I’m going to share with you another group of people whose company I enjoy on a regular basis.  This time I’m sharing a bit about one of my sewing groups – we call ourselves the Warm Ears Ministry, because we make fleece hats for adults and children in need. These hats aren’t going to appear in any catalog, because they are handmade by a group of women who meet in a tiny house in Grandville, MI simply because we love to sew, and we love to help when we can.

On the second and fourth Tuesday of each month we meet at my friend Diane’s house, armed with our machines and assemble the pre-cut pieces. We each have our jobs – some sew, and some cut fringe and tie the tassles. Diane does all the cutting – by hand! It’s amazing her hands haven’t suffered from all that repetitive motion! My job is to sew the hems on the bottoms of the hats after they’ve been assembled.

Each of us has a job to do.

When I have the bottom hem done, other ladies cut the top of the hat into strips and tie the strips together to make a tassle. We go through a massive amount of fabric each time, but it’s a lot of fun. We like to compare the various colors and textures of fleece, speculate on the people that will wear them, and laugh with each other when we make mistakes! But our main job is to make sure that people have something to put on their heads in the cold, snowy winter.

Completed hats, ready to be sent out!

After the hats are completed, we sort them in piles of ten and then bag them – fifty per bag. On a good morning we can finish two hundred hats! We meet all year long (except the second half of December) because winters are really cold in Michigan, and there are a lot of families who are having a rough time. Each year we send a thousand hats to Juarez, Mexico, to a mission that distributes them along with a nice Christmas dinner. We also donate to various local missions – The Santa Claus Girls collects gifts to distribute each holiday, and In the Image provides basic needs for people all year long. Diane also scours the newspaper for notices from teachers and social workers asking for hats for the children in their care.

Do you find yourself blessed from your interactions with certain people?