There are about 40 quilts in various stages of completion in Amy Konz’s house right now.

Amy, the Regional Data Leader at the Mohawk Regional Information Center, has been a quilting enthusiast since her teens. Several years ago, she began sewing and donating quilts to charities that support children in need.

All of Amy’s quilts are created with secondhand, donated, repurposed and scrap fabrics.

“I’m all about not letting anything go to the landfill,” she said. “I love the idea that trash and leftovers can have another life.”

 

A Lifelong Passion

Two of the national nonprofits Amy supports are Comfort Cases, which creates kits for young children in foster care, and Snuggled in Hope, which provides bedding for homeless and foster children attending summer camp.

In an average year, she will make and donate 70 to 100 quilts, depending on their size and intricacy. Some quilts are completed in a day, while others can take several weeks. At home, she always has multiple bags of fabrics and quilt pieces ready to go whenever she has time to tackle part of a project.

Amy made her first donation in high school, when she sought fabric from around her community and quilted sleeping bags for homeless children to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award. Then, while teaching at Department of Defense schools earlier in her career, she organized quilting groups that made blankets for Project Linus to help children with severe illnesses.

These days, she often includes a small blanket or quilted toy in her donations for Adopt-A-Child and other holiday drives.

“I come from a crafty family, and this is something I’ve always liked doing. I especially like doing this for kids,” she said.

 

Creating Connections

Last year, Amy brought her passions for quilting and community service to work, quietly launching a summer fabric drive.

An Air Force veteran herself, she asked her colleagues for red, white and blue cloth pieces that she could turn into a quilt for Quilts of Valor, an organization that supports veterans. She donated the completed quilt at the end of 2024.

Amy used that project as an opportunity to put the MOBOCES Core Values – leadership, stewardship, equity and other pillars – into action.

“We talked about the BOCES pillars and how to apply them to our lives,” she said. “But the drive also helped create these personal connections. I had no idea that some people were also veterans and other people also quilted and crafted.”

That sense of connection and community is one reason Amy has continued making and donating quilts for all these years.

While completing her doctoral thesis, she studied the idea of belonging, particularly for students in schools.

“Having a feeling of belonging is so important, whether that’s at school, at work, at home,” she said. “The children that these charities work with, maybe they don’t have that feeling. But I think a quilt is a way to show someone that they do have a place and that someone was thinking about them and values them.”

 

To see more of Amy’s quilts, visit her YouTube channel.

 

 

Amy is always collecting fabric donations of all sizes and materials! Items can be dropped off or sent through interoffice mail to Amy at the RIC Data Center in the Print Shop.