Don Beld, a quiltmaker with a love of American history, learned about the Civil War era U.S. Sanitary Commission’s quilts after seeing one of the few surviving quilts at the Lincoln Shrine in Redlands, California. When considering how his quilt guild would reach out to Southern California families who lost a family member in Afghanistan or Iraq, Don thought that the Sanitary Commission’s philanthropy was a model to follow. He drafted a pattern to reproduce the surviving Civil War quilt and it “hit a nerve” with guild members. News spread online, and soon Don had recruited quiltmakers in every state to coordinate what he named Home of the Brave Quilt Project.