LWer’s helpful hands make Happy Hats

by Patty Marsters

pattym@lwsb.com

Janice Turner never considered herself a creative person. “I’m more an analytical person,” she explains with a shrug, “a bookworm.” But a little side project for members of her bowling league led to bigger, more important projects, and now, she is part of a team whose goal is to bring smiles to kids undergoing cancer treatment at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital in Long Beach.

“I never had kids,” Turner says with a smile. Her voice breaks a little as she continues, “This just touches me. It makes me so happy doing this. . . . I feel connected.”

Connection is a gift in these COVID days, and Turner, who works in the starter shack at LW’s Turtle Lake Golf Course, is grateful for the connection she made with Mary Clements of Happy Hats by Helping Hands after responding to an ad on NextDoor.

Clements had started Happy Hats in 2018 with a little money she had inherited from her mother. It wasn’t enough to build a wing on the hospital, she says, but she wanted to do something that helped other people. Her son has a chronic illness and had spent a lot of time in hospitals, and she recalled the little things that made him happy. Clements sewed 125 colorful caps for kids to wear during surgery and brought them to Miller Children’s. A woman there thanked her, then informed her the hospital would need about 450 per month.

So she turned to the neighborhood- based social media site NextDoor. About 10 women responded to that ad, which gets reposted periodically.

After the pandemic closed down her bowling league, Turner started masks for nurses and others at Los Alamitos Medical Center. She had learned to sew from YouTube tutorials and found the work kept her mind off other troubles. “Sewing relaxes me a lot,” she says. She would sit in a room in her Mutual 8 home, turn up her music and get to work. “I just keep focusing (on a sewing project), and whatever problems I had are just gone. They melt away.”

But earlier this year, she felt the need to do something else, and that’s when she found out about Happy Hats on NextDoor. She connected with Clements, who supplied Turner with pre-cut rounds of fabric, as well as the loan of a pink portable sewing machine. Turner happily spends her free time preparing the colorful hats for the next step in the process. “That’s what excites me: getting the different fabrics,” she says.

She sews the hats in groups of about 25; the budding seamstress has even learned how to add the elastic. “When I’m sewing these hats, it makes me happy,” Turner says. “I know where it’s going.”

Clements collects Turner’s work, as well as that of others, and about a dozen women meet at her Long Beach house once a month to finish the hats. “She does such a great job,” Clements says of Turner.

Clements herself does quality control, checking each one carefully for accidentally abandoned pins, loose threads, etc. “I have become quality control,” Clements says with a smile. She then washes and irons them before delivering to Miller Children’s. The group has donated around 12,500 Happy Hats, she estimates. “It has become really, really rewarding.”

Because the women know how expensive fabric has become, nothing from the project goes to waste, Clements says. The smaller scraps go to one the volunteers, who uses them as filler in the dog beds she makes, while bigger pieces go to quilt guilds that make masks.

After Clements’ initial investment was spent, she went to the Helpful Honda People, who gifted Happy Hats with $2,000 in gift certificates to JOANN stores. The women continue to look for sales and ask for donations, but they are currently in need of materials. Each yard of fabric yields about four hats, and the material must be free of irritants such as glitter. Anyone interested in donating materials or funds can contact Clements at (562) 5377947 or mb3001@msn.com. One of the women in the group, Jane Heller, collects donations through Venmo @Jane-Heller-5.

“I probably wouldn’t have kept on with sewing if the pandemic didn’t happen,” Turner says. “I’m very grateful for the opportunity to help the community. I’m so happy I spotted that ad on NextDoor.”

The group uses colorful fabrics for the kids’ hats.