BUTLER, Ohio – “Friendships are sewn—one stitch at a time,” reads an adage for quilters. That saying was visually laid out this week during Butler’s Community Fest at Three Crosses United Methodist Fellowship where the Three Crosses Quilt Guild displayed their craft.
“There’s more to quilting than bedding,” Joan Harter said, “You’ve got pictures, clothing, mementos. It’s just so much fun to put yourself into what you’re creating.”
The quilters enjoyed sharing the stories of their quilts and the people and memories that inspired them.
“I made this quilt and I called it ‘Ladies of my Childhood.’ For each one of the little skirts, I picked a special lady in my life and I wrote about what she taught me in life as I was growing up,” Donna Ufferman said as she lifted the skirts on the quilt and showed the text underneath.
Her grandmother is represented. “I wrote about how she taught me about sewing,” Ufferman said.
The woman who owned the variety store in Butler is also represented. Ufferman wrote about her mother working there, and that she liked to be at the store when the fabric salesman came so she could see the swatches of fabric.
Her mother saved all of Ufferman’s childhood dresses, and Ufferman originally thought she would use them for the quilt, but she said she couldn’t bear to cut them up. For the quilt label, she used a photo of herself as a child, wearing a sundress, and wrote text explaining how her dresses inspired the quilt.
Harter worked on the binding of a quilt during Friday’s show.
“This one started in Ohio, and I got it half-finished in Florida in the winter when I was teaching a granddaughter and her mother, our daughter, how to quilt,” Harter explained. “From there we went to North Carolina, came home, and then went to Iowa, so it’s been everywhere.
Maple leaves set the theme for Harter’s quilt. She said there were 76 different maple leaves on the quilt. The colors are realistic leaf and sky colors. She hopes to complete the quilt in time to enter it in the Bellville Street Fair.
Sherry Smith displayed a quilt that featured a guitar in the center of red, black and white fabric quilted with music notes. She made the quilt for her grandson, Nathan Smith. She said he was “really surprised” when she presented him with the unexpected gift.
Fabric also inspires the quilts. Mary Masters bought material because she liked it and it inspired a pattern of butterflies. She got it started and then put it away for years.
“Then I got it back out and I still had material, so I did the stars and I finished that part—and I put it away. Then I saw Celtic quilting and I got intrigued by that, so I thought, ‘Okay, I want to learn to do this,’” Master said.
The Celtic quilting was added to the pieces done years before. To see it today, though, the lovely quilt gives no clue that at one time Masters wasn’t sure how she wanted to finish it.
The guild had all of the chairs in the church’s sanctuary, as well as the alter and stairs, covered with a display of their quilts. And like the saying, it was evident that friendship stitched the dozen members together. Their quilts told not only stories of friendships but also of childhood and families.
The quilts ranged from wall hangings to large bed quilts. Smith brought some vintage pieces, including her mother’s first small wool quilt, and one that her grandmother made.
Angela Jones included a number of quilts in the show that she used her longarm quilting machine to complete. She now uses the machine to quilt pieces for other quilters.
Members of the guild include Sherry Smith, Vivian Shaw, Mary Masters, Miriam Hamilton, Donna Ufferman, Joan Harter, Jan McLaughlin, Sue Shook, Sonnie Jones, Angela Jones, and Karen Bellan.
The guild makes charity quilts in January; the lap-sized quilts are distributed to nursing homes.
The guild was started by the late Marian Bryant at Mt. Sinai Methodist Church. They hold Marian’s Quilt Day on President’s Day in February and a professional quilt judge attends each year to teach a new quilt pattern. Marian’s sister, Ruth McClelland, cooks meals for the event. They also go on an annual retreat to charm.
Three Cross Quilt Guild members meet regularly every third Friday in the fellowship hall of the church from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Anyone who would like to join the group only needs to show up.
