"Casual Quilters" featured at show

Casual quilters (from left): Pat Burger, Laura Hiller, Karen Shadley, Peggy Benton, Judy Johnson, Norma Funai.

A local group of women who call themselves the "Casual Quilters" will be featured at the 26th Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show on July 14.

The 18-member group, which hails largely from the Indian Ford area, was "loosely organized" in 1994.

Their projects have included a 1996 quilt that was auctioned off to help fund the new Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store.

Last Christmas, in another venture, the women made doll quilts for Lorena Bliven's project of gifting dolls and doll cradles to area children who otherwise might not have received Christmas toys.

What puts the Casual Quilters at center stage of this year's quilt show, however, is a monumental two year project that led to the creation of 18 related -- but different -- quilts.

Fifteen of the quilts will be on display together at the City Center Building at the corner of Elm Street and Hood Avenue.

Every quilt is different but shares a common "star theme." Each of the quilts' blocks (the squares that make up the body of the quilt) contains a star of a different design.

Consensus seems to indicate that Norma Funai is the chief organizer, although she refuses to claim any title such as chairman or president.

"It's just a loose organization," she insists.

Funai explained that what makes this set of quilts so unique is the fact that each star on each quilt is made by a different quilt artist, and each quilter stuck with the same star for each of the different quilts. In the end, each Casual Quilter assembled her own quilt from individual blocks made by every member of the quilting group.

According to Casual Quilter Karen Shadley, "Every month a member's name gets drawn; so it took 18 months for all the names to be drawn. The last ones really had to hurry to finish their quilts."

The member whose name was drawn at a monthly meeting had the opportunity to select a quilt star theme and fabric which was then given to the other members at the next meeting.

The following month, the completed stars were returned to that quilter, who then presented a completed quilt at the next meeting.

In this manner, several stages of quilt-making were all under way at the same time over a period of months.

The end product, of course, is a set of 18 quilts that each member contributed to.

The final meeting before the quilt show was hosted by Peggy Benton.

Of the 18 quilts, two are not yet finished.

Casual Quilter Phoebe Olson, will be working on her unfinished quilt during the show to demonstrate the quilting process.

The final quilt belonged to Casual Quilter, Connie McFarlane, who passed away on the day of last year's quilt show.

Her quilt blocks were made into three separate quilts for presentation to each of her children.

At first glance, it would seem that, among 15 quilts with identical star designs by each quilter, spotting an individual artist's work would be easy. But that's not the case.

Because the color, fabric and position of the stars are different on each quilt, finding individual stars can be challenging.

The blocks are so varied that even the members need some time to point out which star belongs to which artist.

Quilt enthusiasts will enjoy the opportunity to trace the common threads of this unusual collection of very different quilts that are really all the same.