In 2003, Catherine Roberts woke up from a dream about her son Nat, who was deployed to Iraq. In it, she saw him hunched over and struggling, then wrapped in a quilt, his whole mood changing. As she tells it, the message was simple: a quilt could be a way to say someone was not forgotten.

A Sewing Room in Seaford, Delaware

Roberts made the quilt herself, in her sewing room in Seaford, Delaware. Rather than keep it for Nat, she sent it to another young soldier recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

That first Quilt of Valor was awarded in November 2003, to a soldier from Minnesota who had lost his leg in Iraq.

A group of volunteer quilters, mostly women of varying ages, sitting at sewing machines and long fabric-cutting tables in a community hall or church basement, working on red-white-and-blue patriotic quilts, USA/veteran quilting bee, wide group shot — Volunteer quilters across the country picked up Roberts' idea and kept sewing.

Word of Mouth, Then a Movement

Roberts had no plan to start a national charity. She simply told other quilters what she had done, and the idea spread through quilting guilds and the early internet.

Volunteers began forming small local groups, each one piecing, quilting, and binding quilts by hand, then handing them off to veterans in their own communities.

The rule the foundation settled on was deliberately broad: quilts go to veterans and service members touched by war, from any era, regardless of where or how they served. Its stated philosophy is that it is not the foundation's job to judge whether someone deserves a quilt, only whether they need one.

Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Quilts Later

What began with one quilt has grown into one of the largest volunteer quilting efforts in the country. As of late July 2026, Quilts of Valor volunteers have hand-sewn and awarded more than 454,000 quilts.

The foundation's national counter passed a milestone in July 2026, when its 450,000th quilt went to Karee Van Wert White of North Carolina, a retired U.S. Army major who served three tours with Special Operations Command.

In July 2026 alone, volunteers finished and awarded 3,018 quilts - roughly a hundred a day, sewn one at a time by people who mostly never meet the veteran they are making it for.

Still Sewing

More than two decades after Roberts' dream, the volunteer network she started is still growing. New quilts are still being cut, pieced, and quilted every week, headed to veterans who served everywhere from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Roberts still lives in Delaware. The organization she began in her sewing room now stretches across all fifty states, one hand-sewn quilt at a time.

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