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It is America's saddest epidemic -- thousands of babies born with AIDS and abandoned to the care of hospitals. When Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross challenged hospice volunteers to "do something" about the problem in 1988, two Northwood, NH grandmothers did.

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Ellen Ahlgren and Mary White began making quilts to be send to an estimated 3,000 at-risk infants. Quilts, Ahlgren says, are the symbol of love and caring. So they gathered local volunteers.

"I figured we could drum up 60 quilts per state," she says a dozen years later. "I'm sort of an optimist."

It worked. When a national quilting magazine picked up the story, volunteers from across the country joined in, following the specifications designed by the Northwood women. Radio, newspapers and television couldn't get enough of the ABC Quilting story. Even Time and Newsweek magazines spread the word.

"U had bushels of letters from every state," Ahlgren remembers. "But once the quilts were made, and we contacted the hospitals -- nobody had any babies with AIDS. It was total denial."

It took a Washington, DC group advocating for the rights of children to convince hospitals to open their doors and receive the quilts. Then the doctors stepped in. It wasn't fair, they said, that only HIV positive infants were given lovely quilts. What about babies afflicted by fetal alcohol syndrome? What about the children born addicted to crack cocaine, or those simply abandoned? What about babies in Thailand, in Africa and around the globe?

At last count ABC Quilters has donated 470,000 hand-sewn baby blankets. The quilt makers come from unexpected and diverse sources. Students from kindergarten to college have participated in the program, So have prisoners and "at-risk" youth, male and female. Office workers quilt during lunch breaks, parishioners after church. When one volunteer died suddenly, her husband went on to make 500 quilts in her memory. And there is no indication that the project is slowing down.

THE WEB SITE MAKERS

Ahlgren and crew managed to sew together a tightly woven network of volunteers. Today the organization's massive volunteer association is held together by just two part-time staff members working from a donated space space in the Episcopal church in Northwood. Last Tuesday, Ahlgren and executive director Pam Weeks Worthen met with the leader of the Japanese division of ABC Quitls. Then they were off for interviews with National Public Radio. This is fast-paced quilting.

Among their arsenal of communication tools (including a video narrated by actress Joanne Woodward) is a newly revised web site (abcquilts.org). The site tells the organization’s backstory, answers key questions, offers updates on volunteers, tracks the ever-expanding story, and spreads the word.

"My faith in a spirit bigger than me has been restored at ABC," says director Worthen, who is, herself, a quilt maker, quilt historian and quilt appraiser. "Let me tell you the web site story. At ABC there's always an amazing connection."

The new webnaster, Matt Fowler, is the son of one of the original Norhwood quilters. When his mother died three years ago, she requested that, in places of flowers, all donations should go to the quilting project. She also arranged in her will for Matt to take courses in web development. Now Matt Fowler has his own Northwood web design company and, just this week, is releasing a new version of the ABC web site. Worthen says the developer has been extremely generous with his time.

"We needed more design," Worthen says. "We needed to cut the information into smaller bites, add more pictures of people and especially more pictures of quilts. We want to tell the story of the organization through the quilt-makers. We also want to add a bulletin board for quilt makers and one for teachers."

THE UP SHOT'

A majority of the babies die. Volunteers never see the children who are shielded from the public by confidentiality laws. Ahlgren knows that quilts don't save the lives of their recipeints. That's not the point. They bring love and comfort, she says, but there is much more.

The quilts bring attention to the problem of fetal HIV infection, abandonment and substance abuse. America's secret epidemic is no longer hidden under a blanket of silence.

Ahlgren says the physical act of making the quilts brings hope to participants. Students who participate gain an awareness that takes hold of them deeply.

"When kids get involved, they understand," says the 83-year old grandmother. "They ask questions while they work. They talk abut things they might not talk about otherwise."

How do babies get AIDS? Can drinking really affect my baby? Where do the blankets go? Why do people abandon them?

Quilting has long been a social tradition among women. Gathered in groups, their hands busy, quilters talk. Ahlgren originally wrote a manual about quilting for teachers. Now she assembled the teacher responses into a new book, "Tips from Teachers". Just released, the new book ffers ways to maximize the educational value of the quilting experience.

"It's a springboard to academic learning," Ahlgren says proudly. "They're not just doing something with pipe cleaners. The project teaches sudentss why the damage happened to the babies in the first place."