Prayer Quilt Ministry

quiltersThe Prayer Quilting ministry welcomes everyone to help, you don’t need to know how to sew. There are many loving tasks involved in putting together the quilts. We have give over 3,700 quilts since the ministry began in 2004. We are so blessed by this ministry!  We need each one of you. Contact Roz Nelson at 422-5463 if you would like to volunteer.

What is a Prayer Quilt?
Can you touch a prayer? Can you pull it close and feel its comfort? You can if it’s part of a prayer quilt.

The idea behind these quilts is simple, yet powerful. A heavy thread is used to take stitches through the quilt layers, and the ends are left free to be tied with a square knot. As each knot is tied, a silent prayer is offered for someone in special need – someone who has asked us to pray for them.  The quilt is then given to that person.  What makes each quilt so special is not the pattern, color or workmanship, but the fact that prayer is symbolically tied into each one.  These comforters are a statement of faith, and a testimony to our belief in God and in the power of prayer.

Prayers & Squares, The Prayer Quilt Ministry, began in 1992 at Hope United Methodist Church in San Diego, California.  Since then, the ministry has expanded to include chapters in churches of many different denominations across the country and in Australia and the Marshall Islands.

Through Prayers & Squares, thousands of quilts have been distributed, each a special gift of love.  They have been made for sick babies, for cancer and AIDS patients, for adults and children facing surgery or difficult family situations – for many reasons, but each for someone in special need of prayer.

The children at Vacation Bible School one summer created beautiful quilt squares that the Quilt Ministry sewed into prayer quilts to donate to children who lost their homes in the hurricane. 

Would you like to learn more about how you can help with or support this ministry? Here’s what you can do:

  • tie a prayer into each quilt
  • join the Prayer Quilt Ministry meeting once a month
  • donate to the ministry: checks made out to St. Mark’s with the memo “prayer quilt ministry” or gift cards to Joann Fabric and Craft Stores or cotton fabric/batting/sheets for backing.

One Introduction to the Prayer Quilt Ministry
When I first started working on “Fabric of Faith: A Guide to the Prayer Quilt Ministry” I learned how the quilts are tied and that as they are tied prayers are said and that people beliee those prayers are literally bound into the fabric of the quilt. “That’s nice,” I thought. “How sweet.” I didn’t really get it.

Then I attended a church service where five quilts were presented during the service and then laid out in the church vestry for tying and prayers.  I stood with my notebook in hand, taking notes on how a prayer quilt becomes…

Among the first people to approach the quilts were an elderly man and a small girl – grandfather and grand-daughter no doubt.  The man, dressed in his Sunday best suit, took the girl’s soft little hands in his own gnarled ones and placed them together on the ties of the first quilt.  He bent his head down to her and said, “See? Like this,” as he wrapped the thread right over left, left over right. “Now pray with me,” he said.  They bowed their heads together, his gray and white one a few inches above the gold and amber of hers.

I immediately put down my pen and paper and laid my hands on the quilt and said a quick prayer – something I probably hadn’t done in a good while.  And then I followed the old man’s instruction and I tied a knot.  I got it.

I came to know that a prayer quilt is made not just with cotton, but with compassion; not just with fabric, but with faith.  A prayer quilt is the physical representation of the biblical principle “love thy neighbor.” They are the visible, tangible evidence of faith – faith in God, faith in love, and faith in prayer. But perhaps most importantly, they’re also a symbol of our faith in one another. When we make a prayer quilt, we’re declaring our belief that love for one another as children of God is so strong it can be a force for change.  We’re saying that God’s love and our love are one and the same, and that together they can bring comfort, strength, joy, and healing.

Kimberly Winston
Author, “Fabric of Faith: A Guide to the Prayer Quilt Ministry
Pinole, California

Please plan to join us as we use our hands and out hearts to make quilts, to bring comfort and tangible evidence of God’s love and comfort to those in need of healing.

To request a prayer quilts or for more information, please call Roz Nelson at 619-422-5463 or Jean Armer at 619-422-8793. The prayers of God’s people are powerful!