WILLIAMSBURG - Quilting is an important part of Williamsburg's social fabric.
It may also prove the key to funding improvements at the old Methodist church now used as a community building and meeting place for the small town's social clubs. Friday and today, the Williamsburg Ladies Club is hosting a quilt show at the building, featuring more than 60 quilts both old and new.
"We're doing this as a money-maker for the building," explained Kathy Johnson, a club member and a main organizer behind the event.
Many participants in the Williamsburg Ladies' Club meet each Monday to quilt together, and many of them have quilts they've inherited from their mothers, grandmothers or even great-grandmothers. Displaying that wealth of quilting history seemed like an obvious way to raise a little funding for much-needed repairs to the building - especially in a year when many quilting shows have been canceled. (Rooster Creek Company, a Holts Summit fabric store which had to cancel its own show, loaned its quilt racks to the Williamsburg show.)
The quilting show is on until 4 p.m. today at the former Methodist church on County Road 184 - helpful signs proclaiming "quilt show" point the way from town to the building. Admission costs $5. Aside from admiring quilts, visitors may purchase quilting and quilt-related items made by Ladies' Club members, or buy $1 tickets for a scholarship quilt raffle. Green Meadow Barn Company is selling its upcycled barn-wood furniture outside.
Profits will help patch up a hole in the building's roof and gaps in its foundation, along with utility costs.
"Animals like to live under the building," Johnson said. "That's kept us from quilting a couple of times, when there was a skunk under there."
In addition to being used by the Ladies' Club, the building also hosts the Williamsburg Community Club, birthday parties, family reunions, funeral dinners and wedding receptions. With its high, wooden roof, it seemed the perfect setting for the 62 quilts on display, a few of which weren't much younger than the building - the church was constructed in 1884, and the oldest quilts there dated back to the early 1900s.
To each quilt was pinned an informational card listing its owner, who pieced and quilted it, the date of its completion and a little about its history.
"I love the stories," said Dot Oliver, an Auxvasse resident and show participant. "They all have a story."
Her own entry certainly does. Her niece had a pile of quilt squares dating from 1933, which her great-grandmother and great-aunt had assembled but never turned into a quilt.
"So, I put it together for her," Oliver said. "Her mama will be so thrilled."
One of Johnson's quilts evokes nostalgia: She and her sister have identical pinwheel quilts gifted to them by their grandmother. They painted the walls of their childhood bedroom pink to coordinate with the quilts.
The quilters themselves have stories, too.
Linda Wessel has only been quilting for a year - she joined the club as an excuse to get away from the farm she and her husband run - and now she's hooked.
"It's the artwork of it, the fellowship of it," she said.
She's set a goal of completing seven quilts in her lifetime: one each for herself, her three children and her three grandchildren. She's already putting the finishing touches on one and is well into another two.
She enjoys choosing the perfect patterns and fabrics - for example, one son is musical, so his quilt features fabric patterned with horns.
"(It's satisfying) to create something out of a piece of material," Johnson agreed.