Cookie Hartman sews together some quilt squares on the latest of about 20 Quilts of Honor she has crafted since taking up sewing in 2019. She is a member of two sewing circles meeting at the Kosciusko Senior Services activity center and other venues in Warsaw. Photo by Ray Balogh.

By Ray Balogh
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — Cookie Hartman came by her nickname honestly. In fact, the sweet baked goods are what got her motor running when she was a little girl.

“I grew up as the youngest in a family of 10 kids,” she said. “They taught me to walk by holding out a cookie.”

The 67-year-old Warsaw resident was born and raised in Nappanee. “Then I turned 18, got married and moved to Syracuse.” She moved to Warsaw in 2013. She has two grown children, a son, 45, and a 41-year-old daughter who “lives with me with her two kids.”

Hartman said one of her favorite hobbies is spending time with her daughter and grandkids. She said she also likes to read and fish.

Her working career was devoted to decades of factory labor in a variety of production industries, and then working for a business collection agency in Warsaw.

Hartman retired in 2018. But she hasn’t stopped working, though now her chosen activities are “all about charity. I find the most satisfaction doing charity work and quilt making.”

She’s a relative newbie at quilt making — and to the craft of sewing — having been invited in 2019 by her sister-in-law, Marsha Huffman, to join the Liberty Sewing Circle at the Kosciusko Senior Services activity center to make Quilts of Honor.

“She called to invite me and I said, ‘You know I can’t sew.’ She said, ‘Just come down and talk and meet the ladies.’ Well, I made 10 quilts my first year. Once you get into it, it is so much fun.”

The Liberty group meets every other Monday and Tuesday at the senior center, 800 N. Park Ave., Warsaw, and Thursday and Friday during alternate weeks at New Life Christian Church & World Outreach, 744 S. 325E, Warsaw.

Hartman joined a second group, American Sewing Guild, which meets the third Saturday of each month. She is committed to sewing “any kind of charitable work,” and has been tirelessly prolific in her altruism.

She has completed “15 to 20” quilts to date, and has contributed her fair share of labor to other projects.

“We sew bowl cozies, which are like hot pads shaped like soup bowls to keep people from burning their fingers. As a group we just made 70 of them to donate to the Salvation Army.”

She also helps make “angel gowns out of wedding dresses for babies who don’t survive long or are stillborn. We also make dignity bibs from recycled shirts, and during COVID six of us met at a church and made more than 5,000 masks. We had an assembly line going.”

Hartman said the group members “personally buy the materials and thread and quilting for our projects.”

Hartman recommended other retirees take up the avocation. “We would love you to join us,” she said. “We’re always saying, ‘Get a machine and join us,’ but we do have an extra machine or two here at the senior center.”

For more information about the Liberty Sewing Circle, call President Marsha Huffman at (574) 594-2021. “Just leave a message on my answering machine and I’ll get back with you,” Huffman said.