Sgt. Nicole Smith of the 121st Signal Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, holds the quilt she created during her off-time in Iraq that commemorates those who worked there. One side of the quilt has more than 100 panels; this side is signed by hundreds of soldiers who have been stationed in Iraq. The quit was sold on eBay for $9,500, and the money will go to a 1st ID charity. (Photo courtesy of Nicole Smith)
Sgt. Nicole Smith of the 121st Signal Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, holds the quilt she created during her off-time in Iraq that commemorates those who worked there. One side of the quilt has more than 100 panels; this side is signed by hundreds of soldiers who have been stationed in Iraq. The quit was sold on eBay for $9,500, and the money will go to a 1st ID charity. (Photo courtesy of Nicole Smith)
The other side of the quilt. (Photo courtesy of Nicole Smith)
TIKRIT, Iraq — A 1st Infantry Division soldier has auctioned off a quilt she sewed while serving in Iraq, raising money for a 1st ID charity.
Sgt. Nicole Smith, of the 121st Signal Battalion from Kitzingen, Germany, cut, pieced together, sewed and ironed the quilt between June and September while deployed to the division’s headquarters in Tikrit, according to a 1st ID news release. She got some help from her mother in Marysville, Pa., and from other soldiers and some Iraqis who created some of the panels.
“I had planned on making the quilt before I came to Iraq,” Smith said in an Army news release. “I wanted this to be a piece of history and something different, something a soldier made.”
The 7-by-7 quilt included more than 100 panels, for each of the division’s component units currently in Iraq as well as signature squares from senior officers and noncommissioned officers, Smith stated in an article on her Web site: www.geocities.com/gikendra/memorialquilt.html.
According to information on the eBay Web site, www.ebay.com, the auction began Nov. 1 and ended on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. The quilt sold for $9,500.
A 1st ID spokesman said via e-mail that John and Karen Wilson of Sonora, Texas, bought the quilt, after taking contributions from at least 25 members of their community. They plan to keep it for a time, then reauction it and challenge other communities to do the same thing.
The proceeds of the auction will benefit the 1st Infantry Division Foundation, a tax-exempt, nonprofit charity based in Pennsylvania, Smith said on her Web site. Created in 1966 during the Vietnam War, its purpose is to offer college scholarship money to the children of 1st ID soldiers killed in action.
More than 50 children have lost a 1st ID parent during the Iraq war.
