Tiny Miracles Project
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Rachel L. Miller

Ellen works on the tiny quilts in her local home. Video

The idea slipped right into the eye of a needle. After all, she'd been sewing since childhood, so it was only natural that Ellen Ann Bidigare fashioned the first of what would become hundreds of tiny quilts for premature babies.

Ellen's son Mitchell had been born prematurely. The stark, sterile atmosphere of the hospital infirmary made a lasting impression and she vowed to do something for all the little ones in those bubble-topped incubators to welcome and comfort them.

"The IV lines and monitors are always beeping and going on," she says. "It helps to add a little love to the room, which sometimes is overlooked until everyone is home and healthy."

Rows and rows of thread help make the quilts.

It was a simple idea straight from her heart, and before long, her project was known around the country as the Tiny Miracles project, bringing little quilts to little babies who arrived just a little early.

"This is someone who I've never met, saw me on the Internet, and she's making quilts and sending them to someone doesn't know for babies she doesn't know," Ellen says. "I think that's just wonderful."

About 2,500 babies are born prematurely in Michigan every year. The demand may outweigh supply, but she has help -- folks and friends from far away and nearby have become Ellen's sisters in the sewing network.

Ellen has transformed her home into the headquarters for the Tiny Miracles project.

"It's a lot of fun," Ellen says. "It's a lot of work, but it's fun because we have a lot of help. We have teams coming over on Saturday with six or seven people. It's cramped, but we get a lot done."

Ellen doesn't have a sewing room. Her entire downstairs resembles a small New England textile plant, complete with some state-of-the-art quilting stuff making it a little less labor intensive.

The payoff comes with her monthly hospital visits when she carries those laundry baskets of colorful little quilts to the neonatal intensive care units. This is the moment that tiny miracles are united.

The finished product.

So from yards of donated remnants, from dedicated hours passed in caring hands, from mothers to mothers and others to others, tiny miracles happen, bringing a little old-fashioned comfort to the littlest arrivals in a high-tech world.

"You see these two-pound babies, and I will check in on them the next month to see that they are up to three or three-and-a-half," Ellen says. "I'm glad to hear from the nurses, they are going home in two weeks and they are going to wrap them up in that quilt to go home."

Check out Tiny Miracles' website by clicking here.

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