At the Council on Aging, the Bees have been busy.

The Pembroke Bees Quilters Group has long served the community with their stitches, making lap quilts for injured soldiers, sheltered women, premature babies and cancer patients. For their latest project, the Bees have sewn about 50 lap quilts to help bring color and warmth into the lives of area hospice patients.

“We take them to Cranberry Hospice and another hospice in Plymouth, and the nurses there give them to their patients,” Pembroke Bees member Susan Loomis said. “The families enjoy having something bright and colorful.”

Each quilt comes with a permanent pen attached so the people who come to visit the patients can sign the quilt squares with “a little message of love,” Loomis said.

The Pembroke Bees meet every Thursday morning at the Council on Aging, with members working on their projects of the moment, whether it’s a quilt for someone in need or for a family member, friend or to decorate their own homes.  

The group was started with just a handful of members about 10 years ago, Loomis said.

“In the beginning, we met because we all loved quilting, sharing ideas and helping each other with techniques and learning,” she said. “Then we started making quilts for the preemie nursery at South Shore Hospital, and it just grew.”

These days, the group is bursting at the seams in their meeting room at the senior center. Though they enjoy the chance to socialize with other quilters, they would like to stay small in numbers to ensure enough space for everyone to work.

“We have people who do sewing by machine, and we have people who do it completely by hand,” Loomis said. “We have people who like embroidery, red work, cutting by template. […] We teach each other a lot.”

Bees member Mary Lou “Mike” Clark of Humarock, chatting as she sewed a square on an old Singer Featherweight machine, said she enjoyed how supportive the group was.

“The people are wonderful. The conversations are wonderful,” she said.

Though there’s plenty of talk, the Pembroke Bees generally work in a “no gossip” zone, members said.

“We’re not a gossipy group,” Loomis said.

Along with making quilts for hospice, the group has made about 40 lap quilts for injured soldiers returning from overseas.

“When wounded soldiers come back into the U.S. from Iraq and Afghanistan, they’re met by the Red Cross and they all get their own handmade quilts,” said Bees member Nancy Landon of Plymouth.

“It’s a nice touch from home,” added Clark, who signs her quilts with her zip code so soldiers know where they’re coming from.

The project means a lot not only to the Bees but also to the soldiers who receive the quilts.

“We’ve gotten letters of gratitude,” Loomis said. “One soldier said he wasn’t going to use the quilt but was going to save it for his firstborn child.”

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