My View from the Porch

It’ll be a big weekend in Jefferson for quilters, with our “Heart of the Lincoln Highway” show

By CARLA OFFENBURGER
August 20, 2007
JEFFERSON, IOWA

This coming weekend, Jefferson will be pleasantly overtaken by quilters and quilt enthusiasts – at least I hope so.

As chairperson of the Greene County Medical Center Foundation’s “Heart of the Lincoln Highway Quilt Show,” I’m hoping about 1,000 of my closest neighbors, friends, relatives and strangers all show up. And yours, too.

The hospital foundation, which I work for, is co-sponsoring the show with the Cross County Quilters, a group of quilters from around Greene County. We think between the quilters’ expertise for their craft, their knowledge of what people enjoy in a quilt show and the organizational skills of a bunch of us from the hospital, we’re going to put on a major event here on Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26.

To see a full schedule for the show, click here.

It’s going to be a real celebration of quilts, of course, but also of community pride and spirit.

There’s a great group of volunteers, from the community at large and from the hospital staff, who have taken on leadership of nine committees in an effort to make this happen as smoothly as possible, and it does seem to be coming together well. In fact, after our meeting last Thursday, I went in and asked my boss, hospital administrator Karen Bossard, if I was being naive, or if everything was falling together as nicely as it appeared to be. She nodded and said something to the effect of, “There’s a good group of people working on this, so I don’t think you’re being naïve at all.” I think she’s right.


A view of the quilt displays in the Greene County Community Center during the 2005 ''Heart of the Lincoln Highway Quilt Show'' in Jefferson. (Photo by Jefferson Bee & Herald)

Overseeing large aspects of the show are Shelly Berger and Sherry Bates, who are coordinating all the preparations of our two large venues – both the Greene County Community Center and the Jefferson-Scranton Middle School gymnasium. Those buildings are next-door neighbors at the major intersection in town, which is located on the historic Lincoln Highway that runs east-west through the community. Shelly and Sherry are in charge of the set-up needs of all the committees, as well as all that is needed to hang and display more than 300 quilts!

Those quilts were recruited by Shannon Funcke, chairperson of exhibitors. In a recent story about the show in the Jefferson Bee, Shannon pointed out that one of the unique aspects of this show is that anyone can exhibit, whereas most shows are sponsored by quilt guilds, and only their members show quilts.

“You don’t have to be a member of anything to exhibit at our quilt show,” Shannon said. “You have to be a quilter or a quilt lover.”

Her own love of quilting is so deep that she put it third on her list of passions – right behind her four kids and husband! I turn to Shannon a lot for the quilter’s eye and expertise on what needs to happen with the show. As exhibitors’ chair, she created and distributed the recruitment flyers and registration forms for quilters, and delivered many of them to quilt shops, libraries and other places in a 60-mile radius. Quilters were invited to exhibit up to seven items.

She also has been coordinating closely with Shelly and Sherry on just how and where all of these quilts will be displayed. And she entered every registration in a data base for our show’s booklet, which visitors will use while browsing through the two buildings full of quilts.

Overall, we have 120 exhibitors representing 35 communities around the area. That’s impressive, don’t you think?

For the $5 admission price, visitors will experience more than just quilts.

Janice Grove’s food committee members have outdone themselves planning our “Quilt Café,” where a lot of homemade goodies will be for sale. Among them, slices of homemade cheesecakes made by three of our community’s best cheesecake makers – Tim Heisterkamp, James Copeland Jr. and Jack Guilmann. They are respectively a financial broker, insurance executive and former city government staffer who’ve mastered cheesecake making as a hobby, and their cheesecaks are the talk of the town. And the café will offer Marianne Carlson’s cinnamon rolls that have won championships at both the Iowa State Fair and the Clay County Fair in past years – and I’ll be first in line to get one of those! There’s a full lunch menu, in addition to all those great sweets and homemade pies that Janice’s committee has lined up.

Krystal Lloyd has taken on recruiting more quilt shops and others who cater to quilters to come set up as vendors at our show. We have a total of 16, and feel really good about the variety of shops that are represented. And Krystal has organized a “Vendor Shop Hop,” a term quilters use for going from quilt shop to quilt shop. We’re doing that right at the quilt show. Visitors complete a card by visiting every vendor, and then they get their name in a drawing for a big basket of quilting goodies. Then there’s our own “Country Store” organized by Marilyn Ganoe, who has solicited and received all kinds of quilting paraphernalia, including what quilters call “UFOs – unfinished objects – for quilters to buy, with all proceeds going to the hospital foundation.

Then, to ensure that everyone has a grand time, we’ve got door prizes galore. Door prize committee chair Sharon Riley has been collecting prizes for months, and we’ll give plenty away over the two-day period. Sharon has also put together a Vendor Shop Hop prize basket. She’s also planned a drawing exclusively for those who exhibit quilts. I’m anxious to see how these all look, as it sounds like we have some really cool give-aways. If you don’t win a door prize, you can buy a raffle ticket for another big gift basket of prizes, this one valued at more than $400.

Hollie Roberts, a member of our hospital foundation board, is directing the raffle for a queen-sized, gorgeous, red-and-white quilt made by a group of area quilters. Raffle tickets are $1 apiece, or six for $5, and we hope it will bring in $2,000 or more.

And, there’s Jacque Andrew who has created all of our marketing and promotional material, including the extensive 40-page quilt show guide booklet, which has detailed descriptions of every quilt. Jacque has been so busy with this incredibly time-consuming job, but she’s so well organized, I barely have to mention something that needs to be printed, and it’s done.

Did I mention our presenters?

We have two quilting demonstrations on Saturday by representatives from area quilt shops. Jenny Gruenwald of the The Quilter’s Cupboard in Ankeny is doing a demonstration on “The Art of Punch Needle.” Elaine Waldschmitt, of the Quilted Closet in Johnston is doing a presentation and then a demonstration on “Embellishments for Quilts and Wearables.” Quilt historian Barb Eckoff, of Cumming, Iowa, is scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday to discuss Vintage Quilts. She’s even agreed to look at individual quilts that are not displayed in the show, if folks want to bring theirs for her to inspect when she’s not presenting.


Barb Eckoff, of Cumming, Iowa, an expert on historic quilts, is shown here during a presentation at the ''Heart of the Lincoln Highway Quilt Show'' in 2005. She'll be back at the 2007 show this next weekend. (Photo by Jacque Andrew for the Greene County Medical Center Foundation)

Finally we will have Betty Nielsen, from Varina in northwest Iowa, to talk about her wonderful project “Freedom Quilts,” in which she has presented over 5,000 quilts to victims’ families from the attacks of September 11, 2001, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Her story – which has been told and re-told in the national media – is very touching, and it will be even moreso here on Saturday when she is joined by the Carman family of Jefferson. They received one of the Freedom Quilts to honor their son, Ben, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines who was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

It’s going to be a busy two days of great presentations.

I’m especially excited that we coordinated with our local Chamber of Commerce, which has organized two busloads of folks to come to Greene County on Saturday, spend some time at the quilt show, tour our “Barn Quilts of Greene County,” visit Inspiration Gardens – a lovely private garden that Janice and Dick Schlicht open to the public on their farm outside Rippey in eastern Greene County – and also eat lunch in our fine Angie’s Tea Room on the courthouse square. How fun does all that sound for a day-long trip?

Needless to say, I have a busy week coming up, as I double-check how many volunteers we still need (yes, you can still volunteer to help!) and what all those fabulous committee chairpersons might need from me. I’ll be working closely with Jacque Andrew as we check and double-check all the signs we want, directing visitors to all there is to see and do. And come Tuesday, the quilts start arriving to be tagged and sorted for hanging, beginning Thursday evening. It will be a whirlwind week and then a wonderful weekend of beautiful quilts for all to see. I hope you join us in Jefferson.

Carla Offenburger, besides her involvement with Offenburger.com, is an administrative assistant at the Greene County Medical Center in Jefferson. Part of her duties are coordinating fundraising activities for the hospital’s foundation, and that put her in charge of the benefit quilt show she writes about in this column. You can write her at carla@Offenburger.com.