Pieces come together for featured quilter

Ajhershberger@eldoradonews.com treadle sewing machine nearly wiped out Barbara McGarity’s budding interest in sewing before she began. “I probably was about 10 years old. I had learned on a treadle sewing machine. I was playing around on my mother’s sewing machine and I ran the needle through my finger, so I quit,” recalled McGarity, the featured quilter at the bi-annual Quilt Show to be held April 17 and 18.

She may have quit, but McGarity could not avoid quilting. Not with her mother’s interest dominating the house.

“My mother quilted. She loved to make Dutch Doll quilts. That was her favorite. She used either paper sack or thin pieces of cardboard to make her pieces. She had a lot of Texas Star quilt patterns that she made her quilts from. My mother had a quilt frame that hung from the ceiling. That is what I had seen done, and the community folks got together and quilted every now and then,” she said.

McGarity said she still lives in the same community – about a half a mile from where she was born.

She returned to sewing years later when she had young children and wanted to make them little sunsuits. (McGarity and her husband have two sons and a daughter; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren).

When she decided to make quilts for her children, she copied her mother and pieced the quilts, but she did not quilt them. “I tied them. I did not learn the quilting part until we started the guild,” McGarity said.

McGarity is a charter member of the local quilt guild, which was formed under the direction of Liz McKay, now retired from the Union County Extension Service Office. About 35 women came together for the quilt guild.

“She directed getting it set up. I started going to every meet- ing. That is the way I started with the group. After several years, they started a night group for the people who worked because they wanted to get together and sew.

“We eventually formed the Going Sewing group. We would meet at Mary Lou Doyle’s house and quilt every Thursday and once a month we would go to a quilt shop. A member had a van that could hold eight or nine of us,” she said.

“We took turns quilting for each other. A member would have a quilt and we would quilt it. We just went round and round and quilted for each other and then we would start over again. We would quilt all day, bring our lunches and share recipes.”

McGarity recalled that Doyle once said that her husband had stepped out in the living room and observed the group. He later asked his wife, ‘How do they know what is being said? They are all talking at the same time,’” she said.

“I think I was in the Going Sewing for about seven years before I went to work. Then I started going to the night group – which was very small at that time – about seven to nine members. But then it grew larger (than the day time guild).”

During her time in the day guild, McGarity said she made about a quilt a year.

“We took pictures of everybody in the group once a quilt was done,” she said.

“Deanna Dison kept us going along and quilting in the guild.”

“I made about 20 quilts. I have several quilt tops that are not quilted. I would rather piece than to quilt, because it is faster moving. I am not real fond of machine quilting. You lose your pattern with machine quilting. It does not follow the pattern of the blocks with the meandering.”

McGarity said she prefers, “the old fashion things – what I have known and grown up with. I like to do quilts where the blocks are all different: the nine-patch and

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