GARFIELD SKIP-A-WEEK QUILT CLUB’S
100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY QUILT
On the left and right sides of the quilt are 12 white blocks listing the names of the 446 persons who are and were members of the club for as far back as we could find records of them.
I joined the club 23-1/2 years ago in June, 1998. I had known Leona Campanella and Wini Morgan since grade school days. Each had asked me several times to come join the group when they learned I had moved back to Estacada.
Attending eight years of school in Estacada during the 1940’s, I knew several people who eventually became members of the quilt club. Classmate Doris Carter, her sister, Edith, and their mother, Flossie, have been my life-long friends. Anna Castile and Florence Hartwig were also classmates. Patsy Ballou, Joyce McCartney, Marion Warner and her sister, Millie Klaetsch, I knew from school.
Some of the women (earlier members), were mothers or grandmothers of schoolmates. Some were friends of my mother, also neighbors of mine in the Currinsville area. Four generations of Leona Campanella’s family members were and are members: Leona’s grandmother, Nettie Pinkley; her mother, Lulu Lynch; and her daughter, Marie Torgerson, our president for the past ten years.
Soon after joining I encouraged Anna Castile to come visit and join us. New friends, Pam Randall, Bunny Swanson and Merle Kiggins, were also invited, and later my new neighbor, Vikki Kaisalahti.
Each of us making a block for each new member after they’ve reached the first year of attendance has been an activity for many years. Each one has their own “special friendship” quilt in that way. I treasure mine.
We have tied many hundreds of quilts for charity groups. We hand quilt for each other and those in the public. We make a quilt each year to donate to the “Summer Celebration of the Arts” held on the downtown streets in Estacada. We also make a special quilt yearly, giving the public a chance to win it in a drawing. Christmas stockings are made for the local area children and other organizations. Several of the group collectively made and distributed over 1,800 face masks in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We have held a quilt show every July since Leona Campanella organized the first one in 1991. The Covid-19 virus curtailed us in 2020; then the wildfires in September came so close to Garfield and Estacada, forcing us to evacuate for a week. We were safe but knew of folks who lost their homes.
Early in 2021 there was so much damage in Clackamas County due to wind and ice storms. Then summer came early in late June with temperatures of 114°-120° here – unheard of before! We lost a year of meetings and two annual quilt shows … our great disappointment since this was our 100th year of continuous existence.
In 2018 we began discussing ideas for a special quilt, knowing that 2021, our 100th anniversary year, was “just around the corner.” A committee was appointed and after several meetings with ideas floating through our minds, we agreed on the idea of the center picture showing the scene in Garfield where the women met in the old Grange building, with Oregon’s beautiful Mt. Hood in the distance. We chose springtime where some of the members could have quilted outdoors.
Several members donated fabrics and time working on the quilt. Pam Randall was our lead artist, doing a lot of the sewing, applique and embroidery work on the scene. Judy Ziegelmayer created the ladies around the quilt. Marsha Geisinger made the three small quilts. Jackie Steinkellner and her husband, Frank, compiled the list of names and Frank helped hang the quilt.
Claire Kellogg appliqued the heading block. Yolanda Lins marked the design for our quilting stitches. Ruth Lazott and Sharon Young applied the binding and the sleeve. The label was made by Pam Randall.
Anna Castile, Leona Campanella, Pat Gaither, Laurie Hays, Judy Murray, Pam Randall, Pam Webber, and Sharon Young embroidered the birds and flower motifs. Many others put it all together with their hand quilting stitches.
I’ve been acquainted with, or sat at a quilt stitching and visiting with, over one-third of the members listed on our quilt. Over these past 23 years some moved away, others came a while and for whatever reason dropped out, and we’ve lost many by death.
For a period of around 12 years I opened my home to a group of our members who were still out there in the “working world” and couldn’t attend the daytime sessions, so we quilted here on Wednesday evenings.
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go … some
pause for a few hours; others become friends and stay awhile.
Still, there are others who leave beautiful footprints on our
hearts and we are never quite the same because we have
made a good friend.”
I don’t know who phrased those words, but this has been my experience with this wonderful, caring group of women. They have been my “quilting sisters.”
Ruth M. Lazott
October 24, 2021
Estacada, OR
