If you give Kathy Whitmore a scrap of fabric, odds are the 56-year-old Litchfield woman will turn it into a quilt.

Whitmore started sewing as a child after her grandmother taught her how to use a sewing machine. Then life got in the way, and between her job and her children, she had very little time to sew.

That all changed when her husband, Mike, who works for Bath Iron Works, was sent to Egypt in 1995 to retrofit ships.

It was there that Whitmore took up sewing again, and soon she was making blankets for children in Egyptian detention centers and for the poor she worked with at Mother Theresa’s mission. She even taught hand quilting to local women.

“That’s how I got into charity,” said Whitmore. “It’s such a good feeling to give a child a warm blanket to wrap around themselves.”

Half of the 70 or 80 quilts she made last year went to Project Linus, a volunteer nonprofit organization that provides blankets to needy and sick children across the country.

Whitmore has also made quilts for the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, families affected by Hurricane Katrina, and other charities around the country. She, along with her husband and sons, also adopt a family in need each year. Along with gifts and food, family members receive a handmade quilt from Whitmore.

But the feeling of giving isn’t the only thing Whitmore gets out of quilting. She was recently diagnosed with systemic scleroderma, an auto-immune disease that is causing her to loose the use of her hands and wrists. By constantly quilting, she is hoping to stave off the disease for as long as possible.

And she’s not letting her illness get the best of her. She still hand sews all of the binding on her quilts, because she believes that’s the mark of a real quilt.