Willing Workers Preserve Time-Honored Tradition

Recently the Willing Workers Quilting Club moved to new headquarters. The group has been granted use of much of the third floor in the old Nazareth Hospital. They have a great deal of space to spread out and work on their beautiful quilts. They are a joyful group, taking pleasure in each otherís company and their art of quilting.

However, Willing Workers is not, by a long shot, just about quilts and quilting. The group is really about giving back to the community. Each year the club holds a drawing for a beautiful quilt, the proceeds from which go toward assisting in worthy community projects. They also provide quilts and blankets for fire victims in the community.

Presently the group is working on its raffle quilt for the Crazy Water Festival in October. Tickets may be purchased for any of the members, and during the Festival the group will hold a free quilt show at McMaster Hall in First United Methodist Church.

Another delightful project in which the members participate is a Friendship Quilt. Each member brings signed quilt blocks that they share. Then each takes home the blocks of her fellow members and creates a quilt to remind her of her friends.

The club's members include Veda Lee; Margaret Manney; Erika Knowles; Mary Jane Kahn, club president; Pat Fall; Margaret Hume; Jerrie Brawley; Joan Crowley; Mildred Cannon; Lida Clark; Margaret McCasland; and Becky Foley. Meeting originally at the North Oak Community Center, Willing Workers has been in existence for about 50 years. Annie Sampley of Mineral Wells was a member of the original group.

The Willing Workers Quilting Club would like to invite new members to join them. Anyone interested in quilting, whether you have experience or not, is welcome to come. The ladies are Willing to Work with you so that you can learn the tradition of quilting!

The club meets each Wednesday from 9 am until 2 pm on the third floor of Nazareth Hospital. You donít have to stay the whole time, of course, and you donít have to be a trained quilter to participate. Several of the present members were not quilters until they joined.

So, no matter your degree of ability as a quilter, you are invited to attend Willing Workers Quilt Club. They are surely willing for you to come and join in!

There are many and varied stories about these quilters, their quilts, and quilts in American history. To read about those, check out my Chasing Our Tales column in the next North Texas Star. There you will read about a quilt that began in Wichita Falls and was blown to Burkburnette by a tornado, about a precious quilter's timble, and about much, much more.