A stitch in time

Sandy Rieker of Princeton, a member of the Covered Bridge Quilters Guild, was one of several area quilters who talked about their craft during the Covered Bridge Quilters Guild quilt show on Saturday and Sunday.

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

PRINCETON — Since the first person put needle to cloth to hold together layers of fabrics, quilting has been both a practical way of staying warm and an art form.

Women in and around Bureau County continue to practice and perfect that art as members of the Covered Bridge Quilters Guild, and they displayed the fruits of their labor at Saturday and Sunday’s “Celebration of Stars” quilt show at the Bureau County Fairgrounds.

One of the guild members at the show was Cindy Smith of rural Princeton. Smith said she has sewn since she was about 12; she made her very first quilt in her early 20s.

“I made a quilt for my stepsister,” Smith said. “It was a mat for her to lay on when she was younger. It was a tree, and it had the leaves and the trunk. She really loved it.”
Raising her children took Smith away from quilting for awhile, but it was her mother-in-law who brought her back.

“She had quilts from her mother that I got involved with,” Smith said. “They had them stored in trunks, and I had her pull them out. I helped restore a few of them because some of them got a little rusty and rotted from being in a trunk too long.”

Smith went through numerous bags of old fabrics to find pieces that matched the damaged quilts and hand-sewed them in.

“I was really excited about that, and that got me started,” she said.

Smith became a member of the guild about five years ago and has been sewing a lot more since.

Quilting consists of three layers, the pieced top, the batting and the backing, and then sewing the layers together in decorative patterns. Although the pieced tops, with their variety of fabrics arranged in various patterns, is what catches most people’s eyes, it’s the thousands of tiny stitches holding it all together that make each piece a quilt.

“I do have a lot of tops that I haven’t finished,” Smith said. “I’m one of these with a lot of UFOs — unfinished objects. I’m a hand-quilter, so making the tops is quick, but it’s that quilting part of it that takes time.”

While at one time all quilters were hand-quilters, sewing machines have taken over much of the labor. But not for everyone.

“There are a few that still hand-quilt, a few hold-outs, and I’m kind of one, too,” Smith said.

“I’m still more of the traditional, but I am trying to reach out because it takes so much longer to do that hand-quilting, especially if you’re going into a quilt that goes on a bed.”
Another hand-sewer is Sandy Rieker of Princeton. Rieker said she has been sewing for years, and kind of fell into quilting.

“I just started sewing, putting patches together,” she said.

Smith talked about all the different types of quilts, ranging from the traditional quilts with their time-honored patterns, to newer styles, such as art quilts and bargellos with their strips of varying widths. She said quilting patterns can come from almost anywhere.

“If somebody sees something, they’re probably going to put it in fabric, if they’re a quilter,” she said.

Many quilting techniques, both old and new, are taught by guild members and outside teachers at guild classes.

Rieker said she learned just this month how to do a cathedral window quilt.

“There’s a lot of hand-piecing to that, so it’s right up my alley,” she said with a laugh.
Both women said quilting is a great hobby.

“I don’t like to just sit and watch TV,” Rieker said. “I like my hands to be busy, so this is something I can sit and do.”

Smith also likes all the creativity involved.

“It’s good to have because you’re creating something new again, taking fabric and making something different out of it,” she said. “Its creative process really helps a lot of people. It’s therapy.”