When Andy Lane received the quilt, he felt moved beyond words.

The quilt, which was made from scratch by fellow Concord resident Kathy Bacon, who leads the group Patriot Piecemakers, honors his service in the U.S. Army and Marines in Afghanistan, Iraq and Operation Desert Storm

“They refer to it as draping the quilt over you, over your shoulders,” Lane said. “Pick up one of these quilts. These are not featherweight quilts. There’s some weight to it. So when they put that over and drape it on you, it’s comforting because you feel all of a sudden like I’m being hugged by a quilt. That’s unexplainable. That feeling is unbelievable.”

Patriot Piecemakers operates as a local chapter of the national nonprofit Quilts of Valor, which crafts quilts and gives them to veterans touched by war. With around 11,000 volunteers nationwide, Quilts of Valor has created and gifted more than 405,000 quilts since the nonprofit was founded in 2004.

In Concord, Patriot Piecemakers began in 2022 after Kathy Bacon retired from the Chamber of Commerce and wanted to channel her love of quilting into a way to give back to veterans. Bacon and her friend Goldie Anderson began the group and joined forces with Lane, a member of Concord’s Veterans of Foreign Wars. Bacon, Anderson and several other volunteers stitch the quilts together, while Lane helps find the veterans to whom they will be gifted.

“We’re here to serve the veterans, to honor the veterans and to let them know our thanks, especially Vietnam War veterans, who were not thanked properly,” Bacon said. “A lot of people didn’t feel appreciated, so this way they can know it.”

An estimated 22 veterans die by suicide each day, a statistic Bacon said helps motivate the work she does with Patriot Piecemakers.

“If one of our veterans looks at a quilt that we made and says, ‘A total stranger made that for me’ and it changes their mind, then our task done. I’ll make 1000 of them if we can,” Bacon said.

The group helped make 90 quilts in 2023 and 67 in 2024. Sometimes they complete entire quilts themselves; other times they sew parts and send them elsewhere to help other Quilts of Valor chapters.

No two quilts are the same and the quilters aim to produce as many as possible. Before a quilt is considered done, the team sews the designated veteran’s name onto the fabric.

“It’ll be passed down to my daughter. It’s an heirloom. It’ll stay in the family. We believe, our whole family, in respect for the veterans, what they’ve done for our country. So it won’t be hard for my daughter to say, ‘My father’s a veteran.’ It’s a really meaningful thing,” Bacon said.

Patriot Piecemakers hope veterans feel the same way about their quilts as Lane does. Bacon, who has been sewing since she was 10, has multiple rooms in her home dedicated to quilting. She estimates that she spends between 40 and 60 hours a week either sewing or organizing ceremonies to bestow the quilts and commemorate the veterans for their service.

For Bacon and Anderson, both of whose husbands are veterans, this ceremony adds an extra layer of meaning to the quilts they’ve sewn.

“So many veterans don’t think that they deserve anything,” Anderson said.

For this reason, among many others, Lane is always on the lookout for more people to match with quilts. He loves watching veterans be draped with the quilt during the ceremony.

“When receive it, they’re in awe, like ‘You really made this for me?’ because it’s an amazing piece of artwork,” he said.

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com