Tailor-Made Kindness

Hartford Sisters Weave Faith Into Items Made for Others

Threads of Love started with a calling. For sisters Renee Purvis and Rhonda Holley the sewing ministry grew from a way to raise money for church missions to a way to spread kindness and faith to those in their community.

The ministry was inspired several years ago by a visit from the Campers on Missions group to Shiloh Baptist Church in Hartford to help construct a new sanctuary. Purvis, a member of Shiloh, joined women from the group when they gathered in the church’s social hall to sew.

The urge to start a similar ministry at Shiloh stayed with Purvis, and, as it turned out, there were others in her church happy to put their sewing skills to good use.

“That was from a God-nudging, a serious, continual God-nudging,” Holley says.

In the beginning, Threads of Love made items to support missions and the Samaritan’s Purse Shoebox Ministry. Missionaries delivered their homemade items on trips to different countries.

When Purvis and Holley began sewing items for their mother, then a resident at Hartford Retirement Village, they quickly saw she was not the only 1 in need.

Today, Threads of Love still makes items for older adults and their visits are popular with residents of Hartford Retirement Village. They make storage pockets for a walker or recliner, neck pillows, and adult bibs for mealtimes. They even make fidget blankets featuring different textures for individuals with dementia. And if fabric supplies lean more toward a baby or child’s design, they will make items for Wiregrass Hope, a Dothan outreach that provides free services for pregnant women.

Purvis’ and Holley’s work with Threads of Love led them to be recognized as Silent Heroes of the Wiregrass, a program sponsored by Wiregrass Electric Cooperative and WTVY to celebrate individuals whose efforts help their communities.

The $1,000 they received went right back into the ministry.

The sisters say Threads of Love is more than just their effort. There are members who craft, who cut fabric, and, who join for visits to senior centers and the retirement village. It takes everyone, they say, and the sisters hope others will see such charitable deeds and be inspired to spread their own acts of kindness.

“If we see a need, we try to do it — whatever we feel like God is leading us to,” Purvis says. “We just try to listen to how God is prompting us."

Threads of Love members use donated fabric and repurposed materials such as sheets, curtains, upholstery samples, pillowcases, and men’s flannel shirts.

They’ll buy discounted fabric from stores or material at yard sales when they can. What they can’t use, they’ll donate to another sewing group or a senior center whose members quilt.

Holley says donations often guide them in what projects they tackle, and inevitably someone in need of what they’ve created will come forward.

“Sometimes we have the supply before we know the need,” Holley says.