When Kathy Murray faced a potential family tragedy, she turned it into a bright spot to encourage and inspire others.

Murray’s son, Lawson, was born last July, three weeks before his actual due date.

“Lawson was supposed to be a healthy normal delivery,” Murray said.

But when the baby was diagnosed with a respiratory infection and fluid in his lungs he was placed in the intermediate care unit.

‘The nurses put a quilt over his bassinet to shield him from the light,” Murray said. “That was a bright spot for me.”

Murray was inspired by the quilt, and after she brought Lawson home from the hospital, healthy and active, she decided to use her quilting hobby to help other mothers deal with the heartache of watching their babies suffer medial traumas.

Murray, who graduated from Calhoun High School in 1993, now lives in Winnipeg with her husband Shayne and their three children. She says she had only been quilting a short time when she made a quilt for Lawson.

“I had these scraps from his baby quilt, so I decided to make a quilt for the hospital,” she said.

In October 2009 Murray crafted a quilt and carried it, along with a bag of baby sleepers, to the hospital where Lawson was born. The quilt was donated to bed 18, the very bed Lawson had slept in when he was in intermediate care.

“As I left with him in my arms I almost cried because I was taking my healthy baby home,” she said.

That is when a glimmer of an idea began to form.

“I couldn’t stop with one quilt,” Murray said. “I felt there needed to be more.”

That is when Murray reached out to blogesphere to ask other quilters to help. Murray runs a blog dedicated to quilting called magnoliadesigns.blogspot.com, and through that avenue she was able to reach quilters from around the world.

“There is a whole quilting community that blogs,” she explained.

Murray said quilters began to jump on board quickly with the help of Amber Carrillo, a quilter from Oahu, Hawaii.

Between the two of them, Murray and Carrillo were able to collect several completed quilts, along with quilt squares from women around the world.

Murray said quilt squares came from New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and China.

“I was amazed,” Murray said.

The quilts will be 24 by 36 inches and each one will feature a “Quilting for Babies” label.

“It was never intended to be a program,” Murray said. “There are a lot of babies that need this.”

The quilts will be carried to the hospital where Lawson was born on his first birthday on July 16.

“This whole thing has been amazing,” Murray said.

But more needs to be done. Quilt squares can be sent to 6 Autumnlea Path Winnipeg, Manitoba R2G 2C2.

The quilts will be given to sick babies and their families to keep.

“It is something for them to take home, and in 25 years if they still have it, it is a quilt for them to love,” Murray said.

But Quilts for Babies won’t end on Lawson’s birthday, it will continue in some capacity, Murray said.

“I was laying in bed the other night thinking I don’t want this to end,” she said. “My hope is that it will continue. When our donation is done I would like to pass it on, send quilts and squares to another city.”

In the coming weeks Murray will be sending a quilt back home to Georgia to honor a classmate who recently died of cancer.

Shane Richardson graduated from CHS a few years ahead of Murray, she said. But she knew his family.

His mother, Carole, was Murray’s kindergarten teacher, and his father Don taught her driver’s education.

Richardson lost his battle with cancer in April.

“It broke my heart,” Murray said.

That is when she began crafting a special quilt for Richardson’s three children.

“The family is going to donate the quilt to their church nursery,” Murray said. “I thought it might be a way to help his family process their grief by doing something to help someone else. It was something I just felt compelled to do.”

Murray said that she will continue to craft quilts for herself and for special projects, but she will always remember the time she spent quilting for the babies.

“People came out of the woodwork to help,” she said. “This whole thing has shown me that there is more good in the world than bad, it has given me a renewed faith in humanity.”