The Wood Memorial Library Quilters was a volunteer organization of quilters that supported the Wood Memorial Library. The group repaired and finished quilts for customers and donated the money earned to the Wood Memorial Library. They also created quilts from scratch that were sold in auction or raffled off, also in support of the library. One of the Wood Quilters’ first projects was the Bicentennial Quilt that now hangs in the Wood Memorial Library. The quilters group was founded in 1974 by Arline Bidwell and Edith Vibert and continued to meet and make quilts until 2014.
An average of 10-15 women were members of the group at any given time, and they met twice weekly on the second floor of the Wood Memorial Library to do their work. Members of the group would chat as they worked, though politics, religion and gossip were strictly off limits topics. It took the quilters 3-4 months to complete a quilt top, which in the early 2000s, they would have charged $400-500 for, depending on the size. The group earned, on average, $1,000 each year to support the library.
This collection consists mainly of the contents of 4 scrapbooks put together by members of the Wood Quilters Group. The scrapbooks contain photos of the quilters at work, completed quilts, and newspaper articles about the group. The material in the scrapbooks runs from 1976-2006. Each scrapbook covers a distinct period, though there is overlap in the scrapbooks. Materials were removed from scrapbook albums during processing, because of the acidity of the album pages and the adhesives used. Included in each scrapbook series are photocopies of the original scrapbook pages before material was removed.
There are also three series of papers accumulated by the Wood Quilters: financial papers, correspondence, and miscellaneous papers and photos found in the group’s files. The papers cover 1997-2010.
Business or Organization Records
Tags: Quilting, Quilts