by Mary Rupert
Thousands of hours of work were on display this past weekend at the Grinter Place Quilters 40th annual Quilt Show at 78th and K-32 in Kansas City, Kan.
For about 15 of those 40 years the quilting group has been holding the event, Ruth Schultz has been a member of the group. Schultz, who is in her 90s, had a butterfly quilt on display at the annual show.
“I designed the quilt, did all the applique and did all the quilting,” she said on Saturday at the show. “It was all hand-quilted, with a small frame at home.”
The quilt took 4.5 years to complete, she added.
Schultz also recalled working on the Lewis and Clark quilt for the bicentennial event in 2004, which she designed, and worked on together with other quilters. That quilt is now on display at Kansas City Kansas Community College Library.
The Grinter Quilters meet each Tuesday at the Grinter barn to work on quilts, and they do hand-quilting for others, with proceeds donated to the organization that helps promote Grinter Place, a state historic site.
The more than 70 quilts at the show on Saturday ranged from hand-quilted antiques to new machine-quilted works. This year’s quilt show had a guest speaker, Vicky Beasley, who is the author of the Scrappy Farmer blog.
An antique patchwork quilt from 1885, made from old fabrics by Mattie Cunningham more than a century ago, was on display at the show. It was handpieced and tied with red yarn.
Nearby, two members of the Grinter Quilters, Albertha Martin and Patsy Wiebrecht, worked on the 2016 opportunity quilt, a very colorful bear paws pattern. The quilt is a fundraiser for the Grinter Place.
This year’s quilt show had a guest speaker, Vicky Beasley, who is the author of the Scrappy Farmer blog.
A member of the Grinter Quilters, Kay Felix, also was at the show with Hazel’s Diary Quilt, a 12-block 1950s-style quilt on which she had done the hand-finishing work.
