Cedarville quilters merge fun and work and history

story and photos by Marla Cantrell
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Thirteen members of the Old Rock Quilters group pose beneath a picture of The Lord’s Supper, in the same room where many of them attended school.

“I graduated from here at Cedarville in 1952,” one of the founders says.

“I graduated in ’54.”

“I left early,” still another member says, and a few of the other women laugh, knowing what comes next. “I’d already got my MRS,” she continues, delivering the line as deadpan as a standup comedian.

The women are close, sharing recipes, talking over troubles, laughing at each other’s jokes. But they might not be together at all if the old building hadn’t been threatened.

“The school was getting ready to tear it down and the community got together and talked them into leasing it to us,” Patsy Blain says. “There were several families got together to renovate it. The floors were falling through. There was mold. Part of the roof was off. It had been hit by a tornado. I guess somebody said why don’t we start quilting, and so we did. That was in 1998.”

They meet every Tuesday, working on their own quilts, finishing quilt tops for customers – they charge between $60 and $80 for each piece – and making quilts to raffle, like the Round Robin they’ve been working on for the past two months. The money they make goes back into the fund to maintain the building.

The youngest member is 66 and the oldest 82. They sit together in small clutches, sewing meticulous stitches and finding the easy camaraderie of women their own age.

“I was retiring and wanted to be around people,” Sherry Nelson, who drives in from Fort Smith each week, says.

“I got tired of quilting alone.”

“I was bored at home.”

“Some of them, I do believe, was trying to get away from their husbands.”

The town of 1,200 is just north of Van Buren. It’s a place where everybody knows everybody. They discuss surnames and within two minutes come up with five separate lines of Browns, calling out their locations – Natural Dam, Cedarville, Uniontown, Mill Road — as easily as naming their own children.

From the other end of the long room, someone says, “Girls, you have got to see this. This is the most beautiful quilt I have ever seen.”

The group comes closer, eyeing Carol Mowrey’s treasure, tracing the lines of embroidery, standing back for a wider view.

“I made it out of old wore-out hankies,” Mowrey, 74, says. “Now, these is hankies the ladies have give me. I saw a pattern and it was just five tea pots and it was a table runner and I said, ’Well, I’d rather have a quilt.’ When I started out I didn’t have any hankies so those on the corner there, those are pieces of head scarves.”

Mowrey started quilting in 1956. She’d just gotten married and didn’t have enough bedding. “My first quilt was red blocks and white blocks,” she says.

Necessity runs like a thread through all their stories.

“My mother taught me how to quilt,” Jane Robinson says. “I was a teenager. She taught school for 35 years. We had to have lots of covers. I put the top on the bottom and the bottom on the top and Mama come in there one day and she said, ‘Jane, you got that upside down.’” She shrugs. “And I just went ahead with it.”

Another quilter nods her head, her grey hair bright in the light from the window.

“I was raised in the Depression,” she says, “and there wasn’t enough covers and stuff, so my mama started making them. They weren’t elaborate.” She points. “They were tacked together like the women in yonder are doing. Not really quilted. If you needed a cover in a hurry, you tacked it.”

The story sparks something in the other women.

“We’re probably the last generation where the older kids had to help make the living for the family,” someone says.

Another woman, working on a baby quilt didn’t even look up. “And we didn’t have the TV.”

“We’d be cooking while the others were out in the field,” a white-haired woman says.

“I didn’t have any brothers, so I cooked and then I hit the field,” Mary Lee Freeman says. “I’d get the dinner for the hay hands, and I’d be eating while I was doing it. While they were eating, I’d be out in the field getting ahead of them with a rake.”

“We were that generation who had to teach themselves how to have fun while we worked. We’re still doing it,” Ramona Smallwood says.

And there it is, the secret that keeps this group going. Work and fun are as merged for them as talking while texting is for today’s 16-year-old.

The women are winding down, and the sewing slows. Talk of August’s potluck starts.
“Lord willing,” one of the quilters says, “I should be able to bring watermelons this time. Got one last night, but it was short of perfect. That is, I’ll bring ‘em if the coyotes don’t get in.”

“What do you do about it?” another asks.

“You keep ‘em out by taking male urine, and you go around your garden and put it in spots. Mark your territory,” she says, her index finger moving from point to point across the room. “Somebody’s got to pee in a bottle. It’s got to be a man. You’ve got to get your husband, your uncle across the road, somebody’s got to do it. Somebody’s got to be willing.” She pulls the thimble off her thumb. “We sure got tired of losing our melons every night.”

Laughter rolls across the room, like a tablecloth snapping in the air just before lands on the dining room table.

“We call ourselves an educational group,” she says, wiping her eyes.  “You come here to quilt and you leave just a little bit smarter. And none of it costs you a dime.”

The Old Rock Quilters can be contacted by leaving a message with the Cedarville Library staff at (479) 410-1853.