Published: September 26, 2009 06:34 pm      

Annual quilt show theme is ‘Honoring Grandma’

Free show to be held Friday, Saturday at museum

DUNCAN — There’s nothing like the sight of colorful quilts to evoke warm, fuzzy feelings of days gone by.

Even if the quilts at the annual show Friday and Saturday at the Stephens County Historical Museum were sewn only recently, the feeling still hovers over the gathering, brightening the days of the quilters and visitors alike. In fact, the theme of this year’s show is “Honoring Grandma,” so the memories the quilts will recall are quite appropriate.

This will be the 31st year for the show that is sponsored by the Oklahoma Home and Community Education groups of Stephens County as a fundraiser for the museum. There is no cost for admission, but all donations and funds raised from selling chances on a quilt go to the museum.

“It’s a pretty big deal. It goes to help pay our general fund to keep our doors open,” said Pee Wee Cary, museum director.

More than 100 quilts and quilted items will be on display from 1 to 5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Anyone residing in Stephens County can enter quilts or other quilted items such as wall hangings or jackets from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday at the museum in Fuqua Park at the intersection of Beech and U.S. Highway 81.

This year’s fundraiser quilt was made by June McGuire, chairman of the OHCE Cultural Enrichment Committee, which is coordinating the show.

“This is the third year I have made the quilt. I do this strictly as a volunteer. There are things or tasks physically I can’t do, and this is my way of helping with the quilt show. The name of the quilt pattern is ‘Oklahoma Twister.’ I saw it on the cover of a quilting magazine several years ago and had wanted to make it ever since,” McGuire said.

“One of the responsibilities of the quilt show involves hanging the quilts, and Gayla Mosteller has done it in the past and will do it again this year. This is an opportunity to show quilts by our grandmothers, quilts we might have made with our grandmothers, and quilts with special memories that even the young grandmother has incorporated in her quilts. The quilts handed down by each generation to the next become, a lot of the time, a record of family history, especially those with names and dates on them. We are excited and looking forward to seeing grandmothers’ quilts of old and grandmothers’ quilts of the newer generation of quilters.”

Tickets for an opportunity to win the quilt are $1 each or six for $5. The drawing will be held at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.