For nearly 20 years, volunteers at The Linus Connection have been bringing comfort to at-risk children in our community through their handmade quilts, making thousands of quilts and donating them to hospitals, shelters and nonprofits throughout Austin.
For nearly 20 years, volunteers at The Linus Connection have been bringing comfort to at-risk children in our community through their handmade quilts, making thousands of quilts and donating them to hospitals, shelters and nonprofits throughout Austin.
Since its inception in 2006, members of The Linus Connection have been spreading joy to the Austin community through their cozy quilts! The members, or “Blanketeers” have hand-made thousands upon thousands of quilts and donated them to at-risk children throughout Central Texas. The Linus Connection is an Austin-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to make and deliver handmade security blankets for children in crisis situations. The blankets go to children in hospital emergency rooms, in crisis centers, in foster care, women’s shelters, and to any child who is in need of a little extra security in their lives. Each quilt takes hours to produce from one of The Linus Connection’s many talented and devoted volunteers.
The idea came from a young woman in Denver in 1995, who wanted to make crocheted blankets for children at Denver Children’s Cancer Hospital. When she found out that there were 144 children in this hospital, she got her friends and family to help her, and they named their group Project Linus – a reference to a character from the Peanuts comics, known for his ever-present security blanket. While The Linus Connection is not a part of Project Linus, they were inspired by the group and decided to do the same thing right here in Central Texas. Their motto is that as long as there is a hurting child in a hospital, protective custody, or shelter, The Linus Connection has a job to do.
One of the organizations they support is Austin Sunshine Camps (ASC), a free summer camp designed for kids ages 8-15 who wouldn’t otherwise have the means of getting the camp experience. ASC tries to make camp as special as possible, and one way they do that is by having a hand-made quilt for each camper waiting on their bunk beds when they arrive – that’s more than 500 campers each year! The Linus Connection has consistently made quilts year after year for ASC, something that means so much to staff and campers. “These quilts mean so much, especially to campers coming from foster homes, where they often don’t have anything that is truly their own,” says ASC’s Chief Programs Officer Zak Van Vorhees. “At ASC, they leave each summer with at least one thing that’s theirs and you can see how much it means to them.” The love and dedication that goes into each and every quilt provides so much joy to those who need it most.
