The walls of the Plymouth Branch of Mansfield/Richland County’s Public Library are a little brighter this week thanks to a unique form of art created specifically for the library.
Former Plymouth library employee and current volunteer Miriam Kensinger has been creating themed quilts for the library for approximately 15 years now. Each quilt has its own distinctive design and is crafted to match the theme of the library’s summer reading program each year. Kensinger also makes quilts customized for each season.
“Every season she usually drops off a quilt for us and we display it over in the children’s area, so these have accumulated over the years,” said Danica Perry, Branch Manager for the Plymouth Library.
The library has a total of 34 quilts displayed this week, accompanying an assortment of quilting books that is one of the more popular collections among the community’s quilters.
“My supervisor is a quilter, and she always comes in and compliments Miriam’s quilts and she thought it would be neat to see them all together, and I agreed that was a good idea,” said Perry. “I thought a quilt display would go well with January because they keep you nice and cozy.”
Kensinger said she started her hobby of quilting in the 1970s through her church, and she started making quilts for the library in 1999, two years before she retired.
“There’s a shelf with a bar to hang a quilt on it,” Kensinger explained. “They got that shelf when I was working here, so I just started making things for it.”
Kensinger has made a quilt for every seasonal holiday at the library, including Christmas, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. She also makes quilts to match the summer reading program’s theme every year, such as “Dig Into Reading” and “One World, Many Stories.” This year’s summer reading theme is “Fizz, Boom, Read!” relating to science, and Kensinger is already looking for pictures and designs to use for the quilt.
“I’m not very good at actually drawing the pictures so I hunt around for coloring pages and different things I can use,” she said. “Some of the designs I get out of the quilting books here at the library.”
Once she has her pictures, Kensinger said she draws her characters onto heat and bond paper to fuse onto the cloth, and then continues with the rest of the quilt either by hand stitching or using a machine. She said most of the summer reading quilts are simple and have machine work, while the seasonal quilts are more elaborate with more stitching. Most of the quilts take Kensinger approximately 10 to 12 hours to make.
“You have to decide what you’re going to do, and then you have to find the material that will do that,” she explained.
Kensinger’s quilts have been on display at Plymouth’s Silver King Tractor festival as well as in the Plymouth Museum. She said her ultimate dream is a little bigger than the current quilts she makes.
“It’s my aim to make a big hand-quilted bed quilt; it seems too big to tackle but I’d like to try it,” she said.
In the meantime, Kensinger’s quilts at the Plymouth library are admired year-round and complimented regularly, according to Perry.
“Regular customers go back to the corner of the children’s department to see what she’s done for the season; it adds a nice decoration to the library,” said Perry. “It’s really neat to see them all together like this; I like the color it’s added to the walls.”
Kensinger’s quilt collection can be seen at the Plymouth Library through the rest of the week and possibly longer due to weather conditions. The library is open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
