There are everyday stealers, and there are cold-hearted thieves. Kathy Goldstone is reeling from the latter. Some shivering cancer patients will, too.

Goldstone is the president of the Cancer Quilt Project, a Boulder charity that distributes handmade quilts to chemotherapy wards. Last month, seven of her quilts, along with a box for donations, were on display at the Dairy Center for the Arts.

Sometime during the night of April 21, the largest and most striking quilt disappeared. For those untutored in the art of quilting, this might sound like a trifle. It wasn't.

"For a lot of people, a quilt is something you sit on to change your motor oil," Goldstone says. But this quilt was the fruition of nearly two years of labor. Goldstone spent a year cutting and stitching pieces. It's like a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, "except that I made each piece of the puzzle," Goldstone says.

This particular quilt had more than 150 fabrics, which Goldstone cut into one-inch strips. There were thousands of pieces of fabric, each of which was painstakingly sewed. The finished quilt measured 104 inches by 104 inches.

After Goldstone accomplished this, Amish quilters finished the job. Goldstone says a quilt comprises three sections: the artistic top layer, the padded batting and the lower backing. The Amish stitched together all three layers by hand. This took nearly a year.

Such a triumph of needle and thread could have been sold for between $5,000 and $7,000. But profit isn't Goldstone's motive. Charity is. That quilt was destined for a chemotherapy ward, where it could have been wrapped around patients badly in need of splendor and warmth.

Goldstone decided to provide this service a few years ago, after she accompanied a friend to chemotherapy appointments. Goldstone noticed that many patients were alone, deriving scant consolation from the "ratty" blankets at the chemo unit.

Further, she noticed that many patients were cold. Goldstone has quilted for years, so she offered her friend a different quilt after each treatment.

Goldstone then offered quilts to a chemo ward, which gladly accepted. Goldstone recalls watching the first patient who used a donated quilt. It was a frail, solitary woman who chose a colorful quilt. "For a moment in time, she was suspended, animated." Then she wrapped the quilt around her like a cape and sank into a chair. Since then, the Cancer Quilt Project has placed about 30 quilts in local chemotherapy wards.

Goldstone has taken the theft in stride. "Well, it's not a life. It's fabric," she mused Wednesday. At the same time, she notes that a theft of art from a public place is a crime against society. "I don't get it." Well, ditto. Squared.

Karen Gerrity, executive director for the Dairy Center for the Arts, certainly concurs. In the last decade, the Dairy has suffered only two thefts (both of them quilts). "It was hard for everyone here, to feel violated that way."

A thief coveting a lovely blanket could have chosen lots of easy targets in Boulder. Instead, the thief stole warmth and art from people with cancer. Instead, the culprit sank to an abysmal low.

Reach Clint Talbott at (303) 473-1367 or talbottc@thedailycamera.com.

May 16, 2002

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