by Dave DeMars
It’s 8 a.m. Already the quilting ladies of the St. Joseph Parish Quilt Group have their large-sized quilting frame set up in Heritage Hall and are hard at work. They have been quilting since 7 a.m. They will continue working until 1:30 p.m.
“Some of us are here at 7,” said Ellie Studer, one of the members.
“Yes, and some of us leave to go bowling,” Barb Heltemes confessed.
“Yes, I let them off once in a while,” Delrose Fischer joked.
Fischer has been quilting a long time, since 1996, and is the leader of the group by acclamation.
In the beginning
Since 1987, the women of the St. Joseph Parish have been gathering each morning to make quilts to sell at the annual parish celebration July 4. Delores Meyer and Pauly Scholte started the initial project.
“It started as a way to make money for the church and the school,” Fischer said. “That’s what we’ve been doing ever since.”
It takes a long time and lots of hours to create a quilt, and these ladies don’t just do one. Draped over a few chairs off to the side is another completed quilt. Besides that, this year they will produce 17 baby quilts and 23 queen-sized quilts.
The quilters meet the first Monday in August and quilt until the end of November. Then they start in January and go through March – every Monday.
“And if we don’t finish on Monday, we finish on Tuesday,” Fischer said.
At the moment, the quilting ladies are working on two large quilts with the theme of tractors. Fischer took the pictures of the tractors herself, then had them transferred to cloth squares and sewn into place. Now they are adding the batting. The tractors are all part of collections that local farmers and enthusiasts have gathered together throughout the years. Fischer has a master list of the 42 pictures on the various squares of cloth. As she sits working on a square, she points out various tractors and names the farmer, from memory, to whom the tractor belongs.
“Word of mouth,” she explains. “I took the pictures. I just called them, asked them, and they would take their tractors out and put them anywhere I would like them to have it so that there is nice greenery behind (them).”
Currently, the ladies are hard at work on the quilt with a mix of tractors – Fords, Massey Fergusons, Allis Chalmers, Farmalls, Internationals, Olivers, McCormick Deering and many more.
Asked why there were no John Deere tractors on this quilt, Fischer explained:
“I was going to mix them up, but you don’t put anything else but a John Deere on a quilt that has a John Deere,” she said with a straight face.
The room erupted in guffaws and groans of disbelief from the other ladies quilting.
“That’s what they told me,” Fischer explained. “I was going to mix them up nice, but when they told me that, I thought, well – I guess I’ll have to make two quilts.”
“We call this the ecumenical quilt,” quipped Marilyn Brinkman.
The Farmall tractor quilt will be on display from June 6-13, and the John Deere tractor quilt will be on display from June 13-20 at the St. Joseph Parish.
Themes, patterns
Exactly how a quilt will be received at auction is a mystery to these women. Some have gone for as little as $300 and others for $1,000 or more. A Minnesota Twins-autographed quilt is the big winner so far. Someone mentioned possibly doing a dog quilt, but Fischer said that had already been tried and hadn’t been very popular in terms of raising money. Another theme that was a disappointment was a golfing quilt.
“That was a beautiful quilt,” Fischer said. “She had the whole lay-out of the golf course, the golf balls and clubs. We quilted around the little golf balls and everything, and it didn’t go well. I sent flyers and pictures out to all the golf clubs I could think of, but it didn’t do any good.”
This year her choice of themes was old antique tractors. Last year’s theme was old barns in the area. Other choices have been a peace quilt, and the Minnesota Twins (they’ve done several of them).
“One year we had 16 autographs, and that sold for $4,700,” Fischer said. “Then we did a Kirby Puckett quilt. He signed it, so that was kind of neat.”
Fischer related the difficulty in securing the autographs, how she went with her granddaughter to the Twins’ autograph day, paid $40 to get into the two-hour event and then couldn’t get Joe Mauer’s autograph. Eventually, she contacted Joe’s mother and was able to secure his autograph.
Other quilters will choose other themes like the “Peace Quilt,” which was selected by Judy Meemken. The quilter with the idea for a pattern gets to choose the colors, the patterns and designs, and the rest of the quilters help to execute her idea. The quilt group will pay for the fabric, but the lead quilter does the work in picking designs and color and gathering needed materials.
In order to pay for the fabric, the members of the quilt group work out at St. John’s University at various functions. SJU pays the quilters for their services and the money is donated for fabric purchases.
While there are lots of quilters in the area, the College of St. Benedict has hosted quilt shows in past years, but that doesn’t necessarily help the quilters of St. Joseph Parish. That’s because those quilts at the shows are often done on machines.
“Ours are all hand-quilted,” Fischer said. “This is the way it was done 100 years ago.”
Doing it by hand means several hundred hours are donated to create one quilt.
Hard work, worth it
Quilting is hard work. Many of the women have calluses on the tips of their fingers, their backs ache and there is the occasional prick of the finger, but still they keep at it. Why?
“Just to get together, “ said Betty Schloemer. “I mean we learn a lot . . . “
“And we laugh a lot,” Ilene Schmitt chimed in, bringing a giggle from all present.
They also have a book exchange in which a book is passed around from one to the other until eventually all have read the book.
Quilting in this way might be called a social art. The women work together and create a work of art, and at the same time spend up to six hours socializing with one another. One woman, Irene Symanietz, who was not present this day, is 94 years old but still enjoys the process of quilting.
The women laugh and joke among themselves. Occasionally, a stitch goes awry, prompting an oath.
“She throws in a little German,” says Ione Jacobs, referring to Fischer. “She doesn’t want us to understand it.”
“Some swear words don’t sound as bad in German,” said Fischer, prompting a roar of laughter.
“Some German words – you just can’t translate them,” said Ellie Studer.
“And once in a while we get St. Joseph blushing,” said Ilene Schmitt, referring to the statue of St. Joseph that stands behind them overseeing all their work.
And with that, the room goes silent and the women refocus on the quilt at hand.