ARTISTIC WOMAN CITES DIVINE INSPIRATION FOR CARING GIFTS

By Erin France/Of the Commercial Staff

Dianne Johnson knows that everyone needs a blessing.

So she gladly hands out those blessings in the form of small gifts to women with cancer or a terminal illness.

“She does this free of charge,” said Connie Rash, an Arkansas Pine Bluff Hospice area manager. “It was just very touching that she would think of others.”

Her signature gifts are white hand towels embroidered with Sunbonnet Sue in pink thread.

Sunbonnet Sue is a design of a girl in a large sunbonnet, usually picking flowers. The design often is used in arts and crafts.

Johnson said she started giving the towels to people she knew in Monticello, from fellow parishioners to friends.

“I’d give them a towel and I’d say, ‘It’s because God cares’,” Johnson said. “I’m blessed by giving.”

Rash said the towels have an impact on hospice patients.

“It’s a moment that helps them realize that somebody actually cares,” she said. “It was very touching.”

Johnson said she started embroidery and other fabric projects around 2002.

“It started when I got a little granddaughter,” she said. “Basically, when you’ve got a little granddaughter you want to do little frilly things.”

Johnson said she didn’t sew clothes, preferring little projects to big ones.

“Little is much when God is in it,” she said.

Johnson then started making small gifts for the women in her church, and later moved to Sunbonnet Sue on white hand towels, an inspiration she calls “a God idea.”

Johnson wraps each towel in a cellophane bag and ties it close with a pink ribbon. She said she can do about 30 to 40 towels in one day.

“It’s just something that’s on her heart that she wants to do for the ladies that have cancer,” said Billy Johnson, Dianne Johnson’s husband. “I’m just happy to help her and be part of it.”

The couple pays for most of the supplies it takes to produce the towels, though they have gotten donations from church members and friends.

“Whatever they want to donate, it’s useful,” Johnson said. “I say ‘You will have a part of this blessing’.”

Johnson estimates that there are more than 500 of her towels in the state, from Fayetteville all the way to Texarkana.

And for Johnson, just like her towels, the goal of sending more gifts to the ill comes from the heart.

“I’m not important — but they need to know that God cares for them.”

Details: Call (870) 367-3525.