"I just do it for mom," Nancy Rose said when she is offered payment for the quilts she handcrafts.
The 51-year-old woman and her husband moved from Washington State to Colorado to help care for her mom who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2011.
One day she was surprised to discover how a handcrafted multicolored pastel quilt could help calm her restless mother down.
This sensory blanket provides tactile stimulation and can relieve stress the disease causes in patients.
That's when she finally had the answer to all the unused fabric she had laying around the house- she would make quilts.
"It was a way to cope and release stress," says Rose, "and to help someone else out."
Continue to the next page to see how she has helped an entire community.
Her crafting didn't stop at one quilt. In just 2 years, she has created and given away over 150 unique quilts to people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
"If people use the quilts, even if only for an afternoon, it's worth it," she said.
Rose is a hospital respiratory therapist, so most nights and weekend she is cutting, sewing various colorful fabrics into quilts that hold a theme specifically designed for their new owner. She has done golf, footballs and a bed & breakfast designed for a former B&B owner. She includes various objects in the quilt such as buttons, snaps, zippers, and even baby clothes that can help occupy a patients mind for hours.
These elements help people to alleviate boredom, channel energy and allow for people to engage in different parts of the sensory blanket. One recipient even hung his quilt on the wall so that he could look at it every day.
People have offered to pay for her work, but she has refused every time.
"It doesn't feel right to charge for them," Nancy said. "People with Alzheimer's and their caregivers have enough to deal with."
Rose's mom, Betty Muir, now 81-years-old, once loved sitting in her backyard and garden.
Rose has struggled to watch her mother's transformation over the years as the disease has turned her from a social woman to someone who struggles to verbally communicate.
"There are good days and bad days watching it, it's hard," says Rose. "But it has brought us closer. I had a new kind of bonding with her."
Muir is now living at Greenridge Place, a community for people with dementia, where Rose has donated 30 of the quilts she has made.
"I can't be more grateful and more blessed and thanking her is not enough," says Greenridge Place activities director Michelle Meyer. "Something so little as these blankets make a world of difference to our residents."
Rose participates in the Alzheimer Association of Colorado's annual fundraiser every March.
Attendee Dana Licht,took a Bronco's-themed quilt for her mother in Los Angeles.
"My mom loves the quilt, it's calming and distracting in a good way," she says. "I think Nancy is a blessing, and an amazing person to do that."
