For the past two decades, Port Charlotte’s Disconnected Piecers Quilt Guild (DPQG) has been on a mission to provide quilts to children in Head Start programs at a half dozen Port Charlotte schools.  This group of dedicated quilters sews throughout the year in order to provide 120 handmade quilts to students of the program, a program dedicated to helping children thrive in school. 

 “Over the past twenty years, DPQG has donated nearly 2,500 quilts,” says Arleen Gaffey, DPQG Vice President and longtime chair of the Head Start Quilt donations.  “These quilts forever belong to the child who chooses just which quilt he or she wants.  And, we’ve been told that some of these quilts wind up in the dorm rooms of Head Start kids who head to college,” Gaffey says.

 DPQG members personally deliver the quilts at the start of each school year.  The quilts go to Peace River, Kingsway, Deep Creek, Liberty and Neil Armstrong Elementary schools and to Hope, the early-start program for children at Charlotte Technical College.

 The 2022 deliveries were July 15th & August 12. 

 DPQG’s Head-Start donation is one of the outreach projects members participate in every year.  Members also make quilts to present to patients in hospice in the county.

2022 Delivery of Head Start Quilts