A group of 20 dedicated quilters repurpose bits of history and find friendship through their love of art and antique fabrics.
The Delaware County Town and Country Quilters meet twice a month at St. John’s Church in Delhi to learn from each other and talk shop about patterns, stitching and everything in between.
The quilters met for their annual picnic Wednesday, July 17 at the Delaware County Historical Association.
The group’s president Becky Wasserstrom said that the Delaware County quilters as a group dates back to 1976, when a woman named Madeline Sanford taught a Saturday quilting class at the DCHA.
She said that the group got too big and eventually moved their meetings to the church twice a week. The group upholds this tradition today.
Wasserstrom said that she became a member of the group in the early 1980s, but once she got a full-time job, she didn’t have the time for it.
She came back as soon as she retired in 2006, and she has been the leader since 2015.
“I’m the supporter, encourager, cheerleader, but it’s just a group effort,” she said. “Everybody just helps everybody and is concerned for everybody.”
She said that a big part of the history is the hand stitching technique that many members still use, which is a difficult skill to learn, and a traditional method that, despite being tedious, has tremendous payoff.
Newer “fancy tools” and mechanical quilting has made different patterns easier and have broadened the group’s ability to incorporate other modern designs, she said.
DCHA collections manager Angela Gaffney is not a member of the quilters, but she is a big fan of their work.
“It’s fun seeing how they do projects,” she said. “They’re all the same square, everybody does the same pattern, but with the different fabrics they use they’re all completely different, and it’s so much fun to see all the different variety.”
The group hosts a bi-annual quilt show and members of the club get to display their work for the public. The funds from the show go to the DCHA.
At “Quilts Along the Delaware,” the group is able to display their work at DCHA for the public. The exhibit is scheduled for September
Group member Eloise Henault worked as a children’s librarian in Delhi, and it has inspired her “message quilts.”
She brought a quilt to the picnic that has a picture representing each letter of the alphabet. The pictures then are arranged in a coded message on the same quilt, this one a Dr. Suess quote.
Henault said that the quilt was in the last DCHA show, and her next one for September has a Betty White quote.
Henault ties her quilts, a traditional technique that holds the three layers together. She made cotton neckties for a while, and started quilting to use the old fabric.
“I had all this picture fabric, and you can’t just throw that away, you got to do something with it,” she said.
Group member Fran Midgley said that the blocks of the quilt she brought with her were handmade sometime in the 1950s.
“The ladies that made these have probably passed, so I put this together,” she said.
Midgley said she moved to Delhi in 2002 and joined the club in 2003. She currently has another project with handstitched blocks that she’s working on.
“We all learn from each other, that’s the best part,” she said.
Group member Barbara Smith said that six antique quilt tops were passed to her through her family. Her grandmother lived on a farm in Schoharie County in the southern Gilboa area, and there her family discovered an old quilting table in the basement.
She said she believes these fabrics could date back to the 19th century.
She said she has only been in the group for six months, but she has always been crafty.
“I do a lot of different hand crafts, quilting, but this is the first time I’ve done anything this big,” she said.
Wasserstrom said that the quilters all have their own collections of fabrics that have built up. She said that when a group member passes away, the family typically donates their fabric.
“We make baby quilts, clothing protectors for infirmary workers, placemats for senior meals, walker bags, anything that’s donated to us we try to redirect it in a charitable way, not for profit,” she said.
She said during the COVID-19 pandemic, the group lost three members.
Group president Maureen Kennedy died in 2021. Wasserstrom said that she was a longtime member of the group and had been quilting for more than 20 years.
Kennedy’s wife Jan Schwengber, a group member and pastor at United Church of Christ in Walton, had always been a supporter of the club, but never quilted before her wife’s death.
She is now a full-time member of the group and contributed to the double Irish chain quilt.
“She has taken like a duck to water to all the quilt lessons,” Wasserstrom said. “We’re really blessed to have her.”
Group member Priscilla Marigliano found the idea for this year’s quilt pattern, the double Irish chain quilt in “Quilt in a Day” by Eleanor Burns.
She brought it up to the group, and they soon got to work on it.
“I thought this is a little bit more modern, maybe it will appeal to more people,” she said.
Marigliano said that she joined the group in 2006 and has been quilting for 20 years, referring to herself jokingly as a “newbie.”
She said that she loves getting together with the other quilters and she reiterated a common sentiment among the group members.
“There’s a lot of camaraderie,” she said. “We talk a lot, we sew a little, we all get along. That’s what’s important.”
The quilt show is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 21-29. There is a $5 entry fee which benefits the DCHA and a chance to win the group’s collaborative quilt in a raffle 3 p.m. Sept. 29.