Quilters Piece Together a Tour to Benefit Bridge to Hope
Nov. 5 event held at four Menomonie-area locations
Local quilt groups hoping for a resumption of in-person quilt shows got their wish this year as the Bridge to Hope benefit Quilt Tour will return to four Menomonie churches on Saturday, Nov. 5, from 9:30am to 3:30pm.
Included are:
- First Congregational Church, 420 Wilson Ave., Common Thread Quilters and vendors A Little Piece of Mind, New Richmond, and Woodland Ridge Retreat Center, Downing.
- Cedarbrook Church, N6714 470th St., Over the Edge Quilt Guild and Piece Works Quilters with vendor Heart Blossom from Sand Creek.
- Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 920 Ninth St., Quilting Queens and Grain Bin Quilters with vending by the Grain Bin.
- Christ Lutheran Church, 1306 Wilcox St., St. Joe’s Quilters and independent quilters, with vending by the Blueberry Line, Ridgeland, and Thread Lab, Menomonie.
Quilts produced by groups members will be on display, quilted gift items will be for sale, and vendors will have a variety of fabric choices and kits for sale. Quilts made by the groups and gift baskets will be raffled off, and demonstrations will be scheduled during the tour.
Business sponsors of the tour are WESTconsin Credit Union, Conagra, and 3M. Admission, good for all four sites, is $15, and kids and students are free. Funds raised will go to The Bridge to Hope for their work serving victims and survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.
Carol Johnson, Deer Park, will have her Christmas Star Bargello on display at Christ Lutheran Church during the tour. It is the first big quilt she has done on her new long arm machine. While many quilt group members piece their quilts on their home sewing machines and send them out to be quilted – put together with the batting and backing by a long arm quilter – Johnson does both the piecing and long arm quilting herself.
“I didn’t have a home for it,” she noted, and donated it to the League of Women Voters of the Greater Chippewa Valley for a fundraiser.
She started quilting after a friend introduced her to the hobby. “It is meditative for me,” Johnson says.
She gets her ideas on Pinterest or from books. Her next project, she says, will come from the book, Aunt Em Quilts, a book that features ways to use up your scraps, called Crumb Quilts.
Johnson grew up in Menomonie, and went to the University of Minnesota and Metro State, getting a degree in psychology, and later in human services. She practiced in real estate, and then worked on securing right of way easements. She worked with wind farms in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas.
Sandy Frigo, Pretrial Service Coordinator for Dunn County since 2017, will show her paper pieced Judy Niemeyer designed quilt at Cedarbrook Church. Sandy studied criminal justice and psychology in college and worked as a police officer in Milwaukee, then a probation and parole agent for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
She started quilting in 1996, but started sewing at age 5 making pillows with her mom, who was big into garment sewing. She is a member of the Over the Edge guild that meets at the Leisure Center in Menomonie on the first Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. Dues are $24 a year, and there are 30-40 members.
She gives quilts for graduations, weddings, family births, Quilts of Valor for veterans, charities, Christmas gifts, and “just because.” She has made 150 quilts since she started quilting. “I go in spurts where I am not productive,” she says, like now while she and her husband are building a new sewing space, with bookshelves, closets specifically designed for fabric, bigger windows for better lighting, overhead lights, a design wall, a height-appropriate cutting table and an ironing station, completing a list that only a fellow quilter can fully appreciate.
Most of her quilts are twin to full size. “I am inspired by all kinds of patterns and fabrics,” Sandy says. “I really love color, like Kaffe Fassett fabrics, Batiks, and ’30s reproductions. In addition to machine piecing, I also enjoy English paper piecing.”
Independent quilters may submit up to two quilts for display at Christ Lutheran Church during the tour. Drop off is Friday, Nov. 4, between 10am and 2pm. The quilt must include an index card that includes the name of the person who pieced the quilt and the person who quilted it, along with a contact person’s phone number.
