WASHINGTON — The carefully packed boxes stack up daily in the chaplain's quarters at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, about 50 a week. The instructions read simply: "Please give this to a soldier." Chaplain John Kallerson, an Army major, gently opens each one and places the contents around his windowless office. Then he lays his big hands on the piles and says a blessing.

His is the ministry of the quilts.

A phone call to the chaplain four years ago has created a national movement to say thank you to wounded soldiers.

More than 7,900 "comfort quilts," each carefully stitched with love and gratitude, have been sent through the Quilts of Valor Foundation to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and 70 other U.S. military medical centers. Kallerson prays over and hands out quilts from church groups, schoolchildren, quilting bees. Quilts made from accomplished artists whose designs sell for thousands. Quilts with bears, fish, basketballs. Quilts with hot-pink flowers for wounded women.

Amish and Mennonites have sent them anonymously. Children at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind have created Braille quilts for soldiers who have lost their sight. Some donors, such as Native Americans who sent quilts bearing warrior symbols, have requested that their quilts be given to kindred spirits. Many have special messages: "You are our hero." "You are very brave."

Some arrive with letters, tapes or prayers.

Deborah Francisco, a defense contractor from St. Leonard, spent a year making one with the black and gold Army 1st Cavalry logo. "I hope the soldier who got it feels like someone is thinking of him," Francisco said.

This is how it got started: A Delaware quilter, Catherine Roberts, contacted Kallerson. She wanted to sew a blue and white Ohio Star quilt and donate it to a wounded service member. For every soldier killed, she knew there were 10 wounded.

"I had this vision in my head of a soldier waking up with horrible flashbacks," said Roberts, 57, a midwife and a quilter for 25 years. "I saw him wrapping himself up in a quilt."

Kallerson was intrigued by Roberts' offer. He had someone in mind, an amputee from Minnesota, who was experiencing phantom pain. He gratefully received the quilt.

Then Roberts, whose son, Nathanael Vinbury, served a year with the Army in Iraq, realized that she needed to reach more soldiers. "I got all my quilting people together and told them we had to start making quilts for all the wounded. Plenty of people were sending goggles and rat traps and things like that to the soldiers in the war, and there were programs for the families of our fallen heroes. But I didn't see anything targeting service members who had been wounded."

She put out the word online to the 19 million-strong quilting community. E-mails started flooding in.

Today, comfort quilts are part of the fabric of life at Walter Reed, helping to humanize the 308 government-issue beds, overlit hallways and hushed visitors lounges. As soldiers are wheeled to physical therapy or the endless tests, there is a rush of color from hand-stitched covers as they roll by. Many of the 600 wounded who come in daily for outpatient treatment have quilts folded under their legs or tucked around their bodies.

Daniel Peters, 22, an Army combat engineer from Goffstown, N.H., received his red, white and blue quilt three months ago. It rarely leaves his side. "I use it every day to prop up my foot," he said. All the toes on his right foot were severed in Afghanistan when the Taliban shot a rocket under his Humvee; he has had surgery to reattach them.

"It brought him a lot of comfort," said his mother, Beverly Peters. "It showed him that someone cared."

Quilting groups across the country have used Roberts' Web site — www.qovf.org — as a clearinghouse for information on comfort quilts. Roberts has made it possible for the groups that piece together quilt tops to connect with longarmers, people who own large machines that efficiently stitch the tops to batting and a backing. Hand quilters can take hours and hours to do this; by machine it takes three to 20 hours, depending on the design.

Lisa Langlais, a longarmer from Springfield, Va., said she has donated her services for more than 60 quilts, including 30 she pieced herself. Longarmers can make $75 to $400 for machine-finishing a quilt.

Langlais has never met any of the service members who have received her quilts.

"This is an anonymous project," she said. "I don't expect a thank-you card. I just put all of my good, positive thoughts in the quilt."

Kallerson has personally distributed 3,069 quilts. "One father brought me to tears," he said. "He brought a quilt back to me because his son did not survive."

Kallerson placed the quilt back into the father's hands.