With Gratitude In Every Stitch

She put out the word online to the 19 million-strong quilting community. E-mails started flooding back. "Many quilters remembered Vietnam days," said Roberts, whose son, Nathanael Vinbury, served a year with the Army in Iraq. "They didn't want our troops coming back to that kind of reception."

Today, comfort quilts are part of the fabric of life at Walter Reed, helping to humanize the 308 government-issue beds, overlit hallways and hushed visitors lounges. As soldiers are wheeled to physical therapy or the endless tests, there is a rush of color from hand-stitched covers as they roll by. Many of the 600 wounded who come in daily for outpatient treatment have quilts folded under their legs or tucked around their bodies. Soldiers clutching the quilts have turned up at inaugural balls and Army-Navy football games.

Daniel Peters, 22, an Army combat engineer from Goffstown, N.H., received his red, white and blue quilt three months ago. It rarely leaves his side. "I use it every day to prop up my foot," he said. All the toes on his right foot were severed in Afghanistan when the Taliban shot a rocket under his Humvee; he has had surgery to reattach them.

"It brought him a lot of comfort," said his mother, Beverly Peters. "It showed him that someone cared."

Quilting has been part of wartime America since the early 19th century. "It's always been in the nature of quilters to have the urge to make something to cover soldiers, warm them and give them comfort," said Karey Bresenhan, a nationally known quilting expert and co-founder of the Alliance for American Quilts.

During the Civil War, soldiers used quilts as bedrolls. Supporters of the Union Army banded together to send quilts to their men, and Southern women cut up their dresses to make quilts for Confederate soldiers. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has 400 quilts in its collection, including one made in 1863 by Mrs. Gilbert Pullan's Sunday school in Augusta, Maine, for Union soldiers in Washington hospitals. The Maine quilt is inscribed with Bible quotations, recipes for medicines and jokes.

In World War I, the Red Cross sold quilts, and in World War II quilts were sent to Europe to be given out to the wounded.

Today, soldiers aren't taking quilts to war as much as using them during recovery. Kallerson conducts his wartime ministry from a cart. He loads it up and wheels it down Walter Reed's halls. If men are skeptical about receiving a quilt, he approaches their wives or mothers. Many soldiers ask if the quilt is free. "They are shocked that someone has gone to the trouble of making this for them," he said.

Eric Frazier, 20, of Altamont, Tenn., a Marine lance corporal, doesn't even remember choosing a quilt because he was on morphine. He was wounded in October in Fallujah and lost both legs, one above the knee and one below, and suffered a head injury. "He could have chosen a pink one, he was so out of it," said his father, Kary Frazier. Eric's quilt is waiting for him at home, on his bed.

One person sent a Purple Heart quilt. Kallerson handed it to a decorated double amputee. "He told me he wasn't sure he deserved it," Kallerson recalled. "I thought if you don't deserve a quilt, then I don't know who does."

Some of the quilts are becoming family heirlooms to be passed down to future generations.

Quilting groups across the country have used Roberts's Web site -- http://www.qovf.org-- as a clearinghouse for information on comfort quilts. Roberts has made it possible for the groups that piece together quilt tops to connect with longarmers, people who own large machines that efficiently stitch the tops to batting and a backing. Hand quilters can take hours and hours to do this; by machine it takes three to 20 hours, depending on the design.

Lisa Langlais, a longarmer from Springfield, said she has donated her services for more than 60 quilts, including 30 she pieced herself. Longarmers can make $75 to $400 for machine-finishing a quilt.

Langlais has never met any of the service members who have received her quilts.

"This is an anonymous project," she said. "I don't expect a thank-you card. I just put all of my good, positive thoughts in the quilt."

Kallerson has personally distributed 3,069 quilts. "One father brought me to tears," he said. "He brought a quilt back to me because his son did not survive."

Kallerson placed the quilt back into the father's hands.