By Paulette Lash Ritchie, Times Correspondent
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Joyce Elliffe, a volunteer at Deltona Elementary, turned children’s drawings into quilts for Ronald McDonald House.
SPRING HILL — Ronald McDonald House volunteer Alicia Kohlhagen carried a piece of Deltona Elementary School as she walked to one of the houses for families with children who have extended illnesses.
Her bag held two colorful quilts made by Deltona volunteer Joyce Elliffe, 63, whose daughter Erin Pintye is a second-grade teacher at the school. The pictures on the quilts' squares were designed and drawn by second-graders.
The quilts were Elliffe's idea. She saw the school involved in an unrelated fundraiser and mused that she might put her quilting talents to work for some good cause that would involve students.
All the second-grade classes were invited to draw pictures. Elliffe used 55 of them, transferring the drawings using fusible interfacing and heat to fabric. She tried to keep the pictures, now made out of pieces of scrap cloth, as close to the original drawings as possible.
"I didn't want to deviate too much from what they did," Elliffe said. Some were easier to reproduce than others. All were colorful.
The children were asked to draw something that means happiness to them. There were pictures of flowers, pets, birds, sports, balloons, hearts and a few SpongeBob SquarePants. The most popular drawings were of teddy bears, playgrounds and ice cream cones.
"They amazed me at what they did," Elliffe said. "I love working with kids and I thought if they saw this come about, they would get this feeling inside of giving."