by Cultural Arts Group

Ruth Stroud remembers that her grandmother joined other ladies once a month to make quilts in her home.

"I sat and observed them putting the pieces together," she said. "Most of the material was from flour sacks and left over remnants."

Stories about our recent rural past might include such images of the frugal women who saved scraps of fabric to make quilts. And while modern technology and a resurgence of interest in quilting has changed the picture of the modern quilter, that image of the old-fashioned quilting bee as a friendly place of community and fellowship remains important as people struggle to maintain a connection with their past and with each other.

"After my grandmother's death, I did not continue quilting," Stroud said.

It wasn't until 2001, when Stroud joined the Carr Court Quilting Circle, that she quilted again. At the same time, she found one of her grandmother's unfinished quilts, which had been in storage for years.

"I was able, along with other quilters, to complete what my grandmother had started," Stroud said. "Since then, I have made a lap quilt and have worked on several group projects. Quilting is very therapeutic."

Marga de Bruijn, who moved here from the Netherlands, would probably agree. She also found that quilting helped her to maintain a connection with her homeland and with her ailing mother. Each summer, de Bruijn would go abroad and spend two to three weeks visiting her mother and working on applique flower blocks (the squares that would eventually create the design on the top of the quilt.)

"Every year, I would work on one or two of them and by four or five years I had completed nine," she said.

Those nine blocks were to be assembled into a wall hanging and presented at a quilt show in September 2002.

"I visited in June last year and the image was done; I showed her the piece," she said. "She died the first part of August."

De Bruijn reflected that the process "was a way to transport my new life to my old life. It was a way to weave two lives together and reconciled our two worlds."

Before quilting, that new life meant taking care of a new family, in a new country with few friends. Isolated and feeling very much alone, de Bruijn checked out books from the library.

"I always liked design and use of color, and I had always liked to sew and I taught myself to quilt. I was in a new country and I made some new friends," she said. "Quilting saved my life."

That element of friendship seems to be the bottom line for the Carr Court Quilting Circle.

"The quilting projects give us a chance to get together," said Marion Brooks, a member of the group since its beginning. "We look forward to quilting and fellowship. And we've done projects that also help the community."

The group's current project is a commissioned piece that will benefit the Charles House, the adult day center in Carrboro.

"Erma Kirkpatrick is really the mastermind of this project," said Megan Clark, a family therapist who joined the quilting circle two years ago.

Kirkpatrick, quilter and quilt historian, received some fabric blocks with printed images of North American birds from a friend, Chuck Wrye. The blocks were discovered when Wrye was settling his mother's estate. To his knowledge, his mother never made a quilt, and he didn't know why she had the pieces. So he gave them to Kirkpatrick, who was looking for a project she and the Carr Court Quilting Circle could work on for the community. At first, she thought of making a quilt from the fabric blocks and then selling chances on the finished quilt, which would benefit a local organization.

When Wrye heard that a quilt would be made from the scraps of his mother's material, he said that he would like to commission that quilt and give the money to the Charles House.

"Everybody benefits from this process," Clark said. "The Charles House will get a donation, we will get an opportunity to serve a greater good and get a chance to be together, and the man will have a quilt. Those pieces of fabric from his mother's estate will be transformed for him. In a way, he will have that quilt from his mother."

Quilts are warm and quilts are comforting, but the making of the quilt gives comfort beyond what one could imagine. The process connects us with our past and with our families over distance and over time. Quilting is a way of building friendships, of building community and of serving community. Or, as Erma Kirkpatrick likes to say, "Lots of friendship and some quilting."

Cutline(s): Erma Kirkpatrick selects quilt blocks that she and the Carr Court Quilters will make into a quilt to benefit the Charles House.