GALION – A Galion seamstress is spreading joy by “sowing” it – one heart at a time.

Jennifer Fried creates quilted hearts for “I Found A Quilted Heart,” a community of volunteers around the world who stitch fabric hearts, then leave them in public places to brighten the days of strangers who eventually find them.

And that warms her heart.

“I like making them and I like to hear how happy people are when they find them,” said Fried, whose late mother, Alice Pickering, handed her a needle and thread when she was just five.

“It’s so encouraging for people when they find them.”

Fried has made hundreds of hearts for the project, which began in Nevada in 2014. Each one has a printed tag saying “I Need a Home” with a link to the website. When they’re found and reported,

“I Found A Quilted Heart” posts their photos and stories online.

“I love to sew, and I’ve always like to sew, and if you go to the site and read all the stories, there are some real tearjerkers on there,” said Fried, who checks the website daily. “There’s people that make them all over the world, which I find amazing.”

Fried uses an index card folded in half to draw her pattern, then lines up the cotton fabric to best display the design. She quilts some hearts by hand, others on a machine, and finishes the curved edges with a blanket stitch or pinking shears.

She especially loves animal-print material and any fabric with flowers, flags, butterflies, or the Ohio State Buckeyes. She decorates her palm-sized creations with beads, stars, and other embellishments before tying on the tags with ribbon or twine.

And where does she hide them?

In the parks, along bike trails, outside entrances to hospitals and doctor’s offices. In little library boxes and scattered around Iberia Cemetery for Memorial Day. She even sends them with friends on out-of-town trips so they can be found in other parts of the country.

Fried made her first heart in January 2021 after battling COVID-19. She had been hospitalized with the deadly virus for 11 days and was still recovering when she spotted the idea on Facebook. “When I got home, for therapy I decided maybe I could make a heart.”

She later took 11 handmade hearts to the doctor who prayed at her hospital bedside – one for each day she spent in the COVID unit – to be left around the building. Others have found homes in Michigan, New York, and California, 12 states in all. “My goal is to get them in all 50 states.”

“Thank you for my heart,” wrote one woman who spotted a heart hanging from a shrub outside a Mansfield restaurant last December. “To me it was just a confirmation of answered prayers and I know God hears them. My little hug for following my heart.”

When Fried isn’t sewing on her Singer – or six other different models – the busy retiree makes rag quilts and does flower arranging. She’s a member of the “Fabric, Fiber & Fun” sewing circle in Bucyrus, the Crestline Patio Gardeners, and the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs.

Now, this talented seamstress has a new purpose in life – and it’s “heartwarming.” “I call them ‘healing hearts,’” she said. “I’m always interested in making new and different things and I think that’s why this is appealing to me. If it’s sewing, I’m there. I’m trying it.” Share this:Facebook LinkedIn Twitter