Quilters’ winter projects come out in the spring

After a long winter spent indoors quilting, it’s always exciting to look forward to a public display of what nimble fingers have wrought during those cold months. A Bicentennial Quilt Show featuring new and antique quilts will show off local quilting talent 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, April 28, and 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in the sanctuary at the Church of Universal Fellowship, 82 Main St. Orono. Admission is by donation, and $3 is suggested.

The Orono Quilters and the Bear Paws Quilters of Bangor, two popular and prolific groups, are the sponsors of the show.

Ellen Farrell of Hampden and Jean Campbell of Clifton, both members of Bear Paws Quilters, will be featured Friday in the church’s Fellowship Hall.

Farrell, 79, has been quilting for 20 years and estimates she has made nearly 100 quilts. She makes mostly scrap quilts.

“When you make a scrap quilt,” she said, “you don’t know beforehand what it will look like. Scrap quilts are my favorite.” Farrell, who grew up in Aroostook County, remembers being a little girl and helping her mother make scrap quilts from feed sacks. Quilting, she said, “is all I want to do.”

Campbell, 72, who lived part of her life in Alaska, does many applique quilts. “I learned to quilt when I was 9 or 10 from my grandmother,” she said. Campbell is the designer of the Eskimo Children quilt pattern. Information on how to get that pattern will be available at the quilt show, she said.

Pat Cody, a member of Orono Quilters, will be featured on Saturday. She will display a hand-appliqued leaf quilt and do a hand quilting demonstration. She began quilting in the early 1980s.

“It was a snowy winter in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and I had a 2-year-old child. I watched Diane Smith’s quilting show on public television,” she said. She estimates that she has made at least 100 machine-pieced and hand-appliqued quilts.

“My pleasure is in the fabric, how the colors look to together,” Cody said. Once two pieces from her stash fell to the floor by accident and they looked so good together she had to make a wall hanging from them. Cats are often a theme in her work.

The quilts she likes best, she said are “always the ones I’m currently working on.” She also loves scrap quilting because it allows her to play with color until she finds combinations that “sing.”

She teaches quilting in the Orono Adult Education program. She has done quilting demonstrations at the University of Maine’s Page Home and Farm Museum and the National Folk Festival.

The Orono Quilters will raffle a quilt done in the Twisted Sister pattern to benefit the Orono Senior Center. The Bear Paws Quilters will raffle a scrap quilt, which has an applique border, to benefit Spruce Run.

Other highlights of the quilt show include a quilting frame set up with a quilt top where attendees may do some stitching; a raffle of several quilt-related items; Merlene Sanborn and the Project Linus display; vendors Sandy’s Hideaway Quilts, Stillwater; Country Farm Fabrics, Caribou; Fabric Garden, Skowhegan; and Viking Sewing Machine dealership, JoAnn Fabrics, Bangor; and crafts, used books and magazines for sale.

Chili, sandwiches and sweets will be available at the food bar.

Snippets

. Will the Circle Be Unbroken, an exhibit of quilts from the collection of Eli Leon and made by African-American women, is on display at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco. The exhibit catalog is $5. To order a catalog, visit www.mocfa.org, click on publications, then on order form. Quilts from Leon’s collection were exhibited at the University of Maine Museum of Art last year.

. The Lion Brand Boutique Web site now offers free advertising for those who make and sell knitted or crocheted items. Visit www.lionboutique.com to learn more.

. Stacey Van Dyne of Orrington, a rug hooker for 32 years, will give a free brown bag luncheon lecture on the craft noon-1 p.m. at the Page Farm and Home Museum, University of Maine, Orono. The museum has 100-year-old hooked rugs in its collection. To learn more about the lecture or the museum, call 581-4100.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.