Quilt show features unusual shapes
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In a few short weeks, on July 28 and 29, the Mission Mountain Quilt Guild is holding their 26th annual quilt show.
The show will be held at K. William Harvey Elementary School and is from 9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. on the 28th and 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. on the 29th.
The theme this year is “Love of Quilting through Curves,” featuring quilts with curved patches instead of the usual rectangular or triangular patches.
Each year the members of the guild elect a “Featured Quilter” for their show. This year Deleen Winters, a member for about 20 years now, has been chosen. Winters is a local quilter, born and raised. She began sewing as a child with her mother’s machine, making clothing for her dolls.
Years later, after Winters retired, she attended an adult home economics class. The instructor suggested she try sewing a quilt, and Winters agreed, not yet knowing the challenge she was about to take on. “When I was young my mother pieced quilts for myself and my sibling’s beds. I thought of them as blankets to keep us warm. I didn’t know or appreciate the work that went into constructing them,” Winters said. Although sewing that quilt for the home economics class was a challenge for her, it introduced her to one of her greatest hobbies. Winters heard about the Mission Mountain Quilt Guild from one of her friends and has been a member since. The guild has about 40 members and meets at the Terrace Lake Community Church once a month to sew and show their quilts.
All the materials used by the guild are bought by the members themselves, but the finished quilts are rarely kept. They are donated to many local organizations such as hospitals, firehouses, rest homes and nurseries, and giving is the foundation for the club, according to Jessie Merwin.
“That was one of the main reasons I started the club in the first place, to try to help others,” Merwin said. She is one of the founders of the Mission Valley Quilt Guild. “That is our goal, and we’ve just grown from there.”
Merwin founded the guild in 1991 along with Pat Anderson and Peggy Olson, and they have had around 40 members each year since.
Last year, the Mission Mountain Quilt Guild’s show displayed about 200 quilts. Winters and Merwin expect the show to have that many quilts this year, and maybe more. “The show will be beautiful, it always is,” Merwin said. “I can’t wait for people to come, appreciate, and be inspired.”
