Lee Cataluna: Sewing lesson becomes a Christmas workshop

On a Friday evening, Wendy Wong was leaving work when she heard something going on in the conference room.

A group of staff members from Kahala Nui, the retirement community and skilled nursing facility in East Honolulu, had gathered together in a kind of pau hana sewing circle. Wong, the executive director of Kahala Nui, learned that the group had been meeting on Friday nights after their shifts since October of this year. Initially, they were just going to teach one of the nurses to sew, but somewhere along the line, the group found a higher purpose.

“We didn’t intend to get into all this,” said Joy Tamaribuchi, nurse educator at Kahala Nui.

“I just wanted to learn to sew,” said Christine Caguioa, director of nursing. “I was telling Lea and Joy that it was a bucket list kind of thing for me.” As a nurse, she knows how to suture wounds, but had never learned to stitch fabric.

Lea Ramelb, director of housekeeping, learned to sew as a child in the Philippines.

“My mother wouldn’t buy me a prom dress, so I had to learn to make my own,” she said.

Ramelb loves to sew and keeps two of her four sewing machines at work so she can do repairs and alterations for the residents. When the families of Kahala Nui residents bring gifts of clothing, Ramelb will do alterations on the garments if they’re too long or too loose. If she notices something coming out of the laundry that needs mending, she’ll fix it right there.

“I don’t want them to wear something with a tear in it, so I fix it,” she said.

Ramelb brought in two more sewing machines, the ones she usually keeps at home, and she and Tamaribuchi invited Caguioa and anyone else who wanted to learn to come to the conference room after work.

Kelly Penn, director of life enrichment, heard about the sewing circle and brought in extra fabric she had at home. Other members of the staff donated fabric and supplies.

One of the bags of donated material had an unfinished quilt top tucked in there, so the Kahala Nui sewing group decided to finish the piece. That’s what turned them into a quilting group, and they set a goal of making 80 quilts to give as Christmas presents to the residents of the Hiolani skilled nursing unit of Kahala Nui.

“It’s so simple. You just sew straight lines,” Ramelb said, though many of the quilts don’t look simple at all.

Rather than make 80 of the same design, the group crafts each quilt as unique and meant specifically for a certain resident.

“While you’re making it, you think of the person, someone specific, and maybe you think, like, ‘Oh, he loves dogs. He’s going to love this quilt,’” Ramelb said.

Sometimes they matched the color scheme of the quilt to colors the person likes to wear. Others have a fabric pattern they think the recipient will like.

The quilts are small — they’re called lap blankets — and are meant to be draped over a person’s legs while he or she is sitting in a wheelchair.

This past week, the 80 quilts were to be presented as Christmas presents at the annual Hiolani holiday party.

“My laundry cart becomes Santa’s sleigh,” Ramelb said. The quilters were excited to see how their hand-made gifts would be received.

Now that their Christmas project is finished, the sewing circle doesn’t want to stop. Besides, they still have more donated fabric, so they’re thinking of making tote bags next.

There were usually about 10 people who sewed together after work on Friday nights, a time when most people go home and crash after a long week. Making all those quilts was happy work.

“Those hours would just fly by,” Tamaribuchi said.