BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Josephine Mosbrucker’s eyesight is deteriorating and she uses a walker to get around, but her hands remain steady on the fabric squares she pulls through her sewing machine, a Sears model half a century old.
“I was told yesterday when you are 90, you are supposed to stay home in a rocking chair,” she said.
She doesn’t. Each Tuesday, she shows up at the Church of Corpus Christi with a dozen other women eager to get to work on 100 quilts for the Caring Hearts Quilters’ show next month, the Bismarck Tribune (https://bit.ly/1VUd3S4 ) reported.
Some will be for sale and others will be donated to charities, such as Ministry on the Margins.
That’s where Mosbrucker’s quilts will go. She makes them of polyester because the fabric is durable and washes well, so those in need of a blanket can take one with them or use it and leave it for the next person.
Most quilters, however, stick strictly to cotton. Mosbrucker’s unique approach has earned her a nickname.
“We call her the polyester queen,” said Susan Tschider, a fellow quilter coordinating May’s show.
The show will take place 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 7 at Corpus Christi’s parish center.
“We started out so wimpy,” Tschider said of the first show well over a decade ago. “We didn’t know what we were doing. Pretty soon, we have grown into this grand show.”
The group has branched out to include quilters of a variety of religious denominations, not just Catholicism.
Supporters donate fabric by the carload. The material fills several tall shelves at the church until one of the quilters decides to use a particular print.
Char Bondeson gravitates toward yellow. Not only is she drawn to the fabric, the color is in her house and it’s the color of her watch.
Her car, bright yellow, has a license plate frame that reads, “I’d rather be quilting.”
On a recent Tuesday, she and two others sat around a brown quilt tying knots in the middle of each square.
At home, she’s working on three more.
“Any wedding or graduation, I give quilts to my family,” she said.
Theresa Volk, one of the founding members of the quilting group, said she started quilting by cutting apart a quilt at her grandmother’s house and trying to sew it back together.
“It was a mess,” she recalled.
Her threads were too long, and each piece of fabric looked more like a parachute than a neatly stitched patch.
As an adult, she joined a local quilting group and refined her skills.
The women of the Caring Hearts Quilters also are eager to offer advice.
“You can come with a problem or need a suggestion and always get help,” Volk said.
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, https://www.bismarcktribune.com
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