Loose Leaf Notes

~ The following was published in The Floyd Press on March 26, 2009.

As the Old Church Gallery Quilter’s Guild membership has grown so has the size of their meeting locations. Formed in 1986 as a part of The Old Church Gallery, the quilters outgrew the gallery’s original Presbyterian Church location. They met at the Wilson Street gallery location, the Jessie Peterman library, the new Presbyterian Church, and then the Bank of Floyd Community Room. When the Community Room ceased to be available, the guild began holding their bi-monthly meetings at their current location, The Jacksonville Center for the Arts.

What began with twelve quilters in 1986 has grown to over seventy. Pauline Hodges, guild treasurer and a founding member says that national and international teachers are active members of the Floyd based guild. “The majority are not from Floyd. Members come from Winston Salem, Covington, West Virginia, Blacksburg, Meadows of Dan, Smith Mountain Lake, and Roanoke,” she noted.

Still operating under the Old Church Gallery umbrella, the guild shares the gallery’s mission of preserving and showcasing local culture and art. According to the guild’s webpage, a second goal is “to establish a framework within which experienced and beginning quilters may learn from one another, sharing techniques and quilting advances.” Their bi-monthly meetings serve that purpose.

Hodges, a Floyd native who grew up with quilting, says that guild meetings draw an average attendance of about thirty members. Meetings are planned by an alternating program director and generally feature a short business portion, followed by a teaching demonstration, a workshop, or lecture. Once a month members participate in a “Show and Tell,” presenting their creative works to the group. ”

Recently the guild hosted Pennsylvania quilter George Sicliano for a lecture and a “trunk show,” which refers to the car trunk load of Sicliano’s fiber art that he brought to show. Male quilters are uncommon and there are no male members in the Floyd guild, Hodges said, but she remembers a male quilter from Asheville who was a quilt show judge.

“I don’t remember not quilting,” Hodges, said, explaining how quilts were “made from leftovers from what you sewed at home.” In the past, dresses and quilts were also made from the feed sack bags that farm animal feed came in. Reproductions of feed sack bags and civil war fabrics are available today and used by some quilters, Hodges explained.

Born of ingenuity, quilting is an art that has adapted to modern times. “The majority of members use sewing machines but some do hand quilting,” guild president Karen Tauber said. “We don’t go down to the river and wash our clothes any more. We all have washing machines and are glad to have sewing machines.”

Tauber, who teaches quilting at the Blacksburg YMCA and organizes the yearly Blue Ridge Quilt Festival, remembers when guild founding member Effie Brown gave a presentation of her life’s work as a quilter and spoke about the old days of quilting. Brown, one of the eldest members, gave some advice, saying ‘if you want to do black quilt do it early in your career because later your eyesight won’t work.’

The guild has its own show in the Floyd Elementary School at the Woman’s Club annual Arts and Crafts Fair each October, displaying “over 150 entries from across the US which includes every sort of quilt from traditional to contemporary and ranging from large bed quilts, to miniature quilts, with an always impressive display of wearable art,” the guild website reads. Every year a guild member is featured and a show winner is chosen. The public is encouraged to enter their fiber art in this impressive annual exhibit.

Service work is also a guild activity. At a recent guild meeting member Kim Horne posted a pattern for making quilted bags to hang on the backs of walkers and wheel chairs for donation to area nursing homes. Quilters who brought their sewing machines got busy cutting and sewing for the project. The guild has also donated collaboratively made quilts for fundraisers. Most recently they made and donated one to benefit the Jacksonville Center for the Arts.

Guild members have sold their quilts, won show awards, and have had their designs published in books. “But family comes first,” one member said. “I still have some of my grandmother’s quilts,” said Floyd native Jane Shank.

Quilting in Floyd is a part of its mountain culture, passed down through generations and through the help of guilds like the Old Church Gallery Guild. Although the guild has expanded beyond the county and draws from talent far and wide, its traditional roots remain.

As for the guild’s next location move, they hope it will take them full circle, reuniting with the Old Church Gallery, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. “We hope to someday have our own space with a big room with the Old Church Gallery,” Hodges said. ~ Colleen Redman

Note: For more information about The Floyd Quilter’s Guild go to http://floydquilts.freeservers.com To read an article I wrote for the local paper on the Jacksonville Center for the Arts go HERE.