Quilt show opens Saturday at WOWSPACE

WITTENBERG — The annual Walls of Wittenberg quilt show is set to open Saturday and will be on display at the WOWSPACE for the next three weekends.

On Saturday, a guest lecturer will be speaking at 1 p.m. at the Wittenberg Community Center, 208 W. Vinal St. Nancy Kunst-Smith is a quilt appraiser from Stevens Point and will cover the topic of how and why quilts should be appraised.
Mary Koeppel has been in charge of the quilt show for the past three years. She belongs to the Quilting Friends of Hatley group, and many of those members are helping her. Many have entered quilts, some will help with the registration and installation, others will help with the end of the show.

“It takes a lot of work to put on this kind of show, and I’m so grateful to have help from my fellow quilters,” Koeppel said, who anticipates about 30-40 entries.

Koeppel noted that in addition to the actual show, there will also be special displays including a signature quilt, a quilt made with Army fatigues and a selection of honor quilts sewn for veterans.

“I’m excited to have the specialty quilts on loan,” Koeppel said. “It helps to show the variety of quilt making.”

The 1905 Redwork signature quilt was created by Methodist church women from the Wittenberg and Stevens Point areas and is on loan from the Wittenberg Area Historical Society. Koeppel said that when people moved away from the area, it was a tradition to create a red and white quilt with signatures embroidered into the fabric so they would remember the friends they left behind.

Koeppel noted that although most of the women have passed, there will be many familiar family names to see.
Another quilt, by Debra Court, of Bear Creek, features the uniform shirts worn by her husband, Robert, from when he served in the Army. According to Court, her husband complained about the closet space being taken up by his old Army uniforms, and he wanted her to get rid of them.

Court took two of his shirts — a lighter green one from his time in basic training, the darker green shirt was what he wore in Vietnam. She cut out the pockets, the collars and the cuffs and incorporated them into the rest of the quilt squares. With the help of a machine that can transfer images to fabric, Court was able to take four pictures from her husband’s time in the Army and add them to the quilt.

She said that her husband wasn’t keen on the idea of his shirts being used in a quilt but was surprised at the finished quilt and emotional when he saw she had added the pictures.

The Quilting Friends of Hatley make a variety of different sized quilts for local veterans, Koeppel said. A few examples of those will also be on display.

According to Koeppel, the main exhibit, though not judged, is eligible for monetary prizes. First, second and third awards will be given out based on people’s choices. An addition prize will be given as an Award of Excellence to one quilter, as determined by a committee of local quilters.

Melissa Young owned Grant’s March quilt shop in Wausau. When she passed last year, her daughter, Kate, settled the estate by donating several shop items to Koeppel to use as prizes for the quilt show.

Sponsored by Walls of Wittenberg, Applewood Lane Alpacas and Central Wisconsin Electric Cooperative, this is the sixth time WOW has produced a non-juried show open to all quilters.

Admission to the show and lecture is free.

AT A GLANCE
WHAT: “Art of the Quilter VI: Keep Me In Stitches”
WHERE: WOWSPACE, 114 Vinal St., Wittenberg
WHEN: Weekends, Jan. 18, 19, 25, 26; Feb. 1, 2
TIME: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.