i
a
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Vis
Alzheimer's group
to meet in Shelby
The Alzheimer’s Support
Group will meet Tuesday, March
18 from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Life
Enrichment Center in Shelby.
The program will be
“Avoiding Problems With
Medication.”
Sitter service is available at no
charge for persons with demen-
tia.
For more information call the
Life Enrichment Center at 484-
0405.
Duo to perform
at Gastonia church
Suzanne Gilchrest and
Winslow Browning will perform
the final concert for Gaston
Concert Association’s 2002-03
season March 21 at 7:30 p.m. at
First Presbyterian Church in
Gastonia.
Admission is by membership,
which is $35. Tickets may be
purchased at the door and the
$35 price will include the entire
2003-04 season.
For more information call B-an
Vance at 853-2822.
Hoop-a-thon for
Huntington research
A hoop-a-thon April 19 at the
. Dover Foundation YMCA, 411
Cherryville Highway, Shelby,
will raise money for medical
research fro a cure for
Huntington's Disease.
There will be a 3-on-3 tourna-
ment and free throw shooting
competition. Registration begins
at 9 a.m. and the shoot will run
until 4 p.m.
For more information call Gina
Hamrick at 482-0112.
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The Kings Mountain Herald
March 13, 2003
Women learn about different trends and types of quilts
during lunch meeting at Kings Mountain History Museum
BY ABIGAIL WOLFORD
Staff Writer
Paula Barringer, a Shelby quil-
ter, gave a talk on quilts to several
area people during their lunch
breaks on Tuesday at the Kings
Mountain Historical Museum.
Barringer defined a quilt as
anything that has a top and a bot-
tom and batting in between. She
said quilts can be tacked,
machine-made, or stapled. The
covers can also contain a wide
array of styles, she said.
She said that history books
show that quilting has had many
trends, just like any other form of
art. In the early 19th century,
American quilts were typically
made in the patchwork style and
followed the cycle of life. Young
girls learned to do needlework
early in life and then went on to
make friendship, double wedding -
ring, crib, and widow's bereave-
ment quilts.
Without television, socializing
took place at church, she said.
Quilts were also a way for women
to have fun at the same time that
they visited and performed a necessary task for
the household. Quilts were mainly layered on
beds for warmth at night, she said.
During the time of slavery, members of the
Underground Railroad would hang quilts with
Log Cabin patterns and blue centers on their
clothes lines so that slaves would know that
they had reached a safe place to rest.
With the development of the sewing
machine, railroad, and fabric mills,
ABIGAIL WOLFORD / HERALD
Paula Barringer, a local quilter, presented a lunch hour talk on
quilts to a group of interested citizens at the Kings Mountain
Historical Museum on Tuesday. The quilt she is holding is one she
made. She brought several of her quilts to demonstrate different
patterns at the talk.
made fabrics became available to women. In
the late 1800s, women began to make crazy
quilts, which were quilts with no specific pat-
tern.
Crazy quilts contain much intricate stitching
and bright colors. The quilts are made of
scraps of whatever kind of fabric the women
could find. Barringer and another woman
shared that their grandmothers used sample
scraps for men’s suit jackets to make their
mor n-
gaa quilts. Barringer’s grandmother also used
empty feed sacks for the back of the
quilt.
Barringer said that crazy quilts were
American women’s answer to the
Victorian age, when women were not
considered to be much above livestock.
Crazy quilting allowed women to
express their creativity. The embroi-
dery stitches on the quilts include
many different shapes, like hearts, spi-
ders, flowers, lines of poetry, dates,
names, and initials.
During World War I, women contin-
ued to make crazy quilts, although less
materials were available. They used
the materials they could find and often
stitched the quilts together with yarn. i
By looking at the fabric in the quilts, of
Barringer said people can figure out 3
when the quilt was made.
Contemporary quilts, like contempo-
rary art, can be interpreted in many
ways. Quilters prefer to leave the
meaning of a quilt up to its beholder.
Memorial quilts are also in style. The
huge AIDS quilt, 9-11 quilt, and breast
cancer quilt are among the most
famous.
Barringer offered some advice for
the beginning quilters at the talk.
“If you make a mistake, don’t ago-
nize over it. Don’t rip it out. Just move on,”
she said.
Barringer brought several quilts that she has
made through the years to the talk. One of her
quilts was made entirely out of silk ties. She
even sewed the tie tags around the edges. She
also showed a quilt she had made with the stu-
dents of her daughter's third grade class. The
students formed animals with the geometric
shaped fabric, and she ironed them onto the
fabric.
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