Reverence Quilt Project begins to honor Texas flood victims

KERR COUNTY, Texas — Art has a way of finding the beauty in pain. A new art project aims to show love to those affected by the flooding on July 4 in Kerr County.

In the Texas Hill Country, the Found on the Guadalupe River Project continues. 

“However much time it takes, that’s how much time it takes,” Dondi Persyn said.

As the founder of the project, Persyn is hoping families are reunited with their items that washed away in the July floods.

“I knew when I started this that it wasn’t just going to be cleaning clothes,” Persyn said.

As thousands of items sit in a warehouse in Ingram, Texas, waiting to be claimed, the team is starting a new project.

“We have these textiles, and they’ve been through it, and now it’s time to give them a new home,” Persyn said.

The team will use the unclaimed and donated items for the Reverence Quilt Project.

“I’m excited about it,” Persyn said. “I think it’s a part of the next step.” 

The project will see pieces of material that survived the floodwaters coming together to create a 10-by-10-foot quilt, paying homage to Hill Country camps.

“We’ll have Camp La Junta, Heart of the Hills, Mystic,” Persyn said. “These will all be embroidered. And they will be on the Texas part.” 

Inside the Lone Star State, there will be a heart, where the names of those who lost their lives will be honored.

“If they were all machine-embroidered and perfect, it wouldn’t have the same impact,” said one volunteer.

Persyn says every piece of material has a story, and they’ll be shared on this quilt.

“We have a water aspect,” Persyn said. “And that’s from a family that lost many loved ones. So, we’re going to use one of their towels for the water.”

She’s asking for agencies that assisted during the flood to send in their patches so they can also be included in the project.

“The trim of it is going to be all textiles from first responders,” Persyn said. “Everybody that showed up to help will kind of surround the quilt the way that we did in real life.”

Four months post-flood, the quilting process is just getting started, with volunteers gathering to meet a few times a month until the project is complete.

“That’s the point of it — to tell our story,” Persyn said. “And to turn the grief into grace.”