Quilting longstanding tradition for Rockingham County family

By Steve Lawson

Published: August 21, 2008

As Tincy Hall leaned back from the quilting frame Wednesday afternoon to take a brief break from the tedious stitching, her sweatshirt became clearly visible.

The phrase printed on the front seemed perfectly suitable for the situation - “You can never have too many quilts.”

Hall, 94, sat at one corner of the queen-size quilt, happily laboring away with needle and thread. At the other corners were two of her daughters, Glenda Riddle and Sandra Martin, and a cousin, Mary Chandler.

The quartet of crafters arrived at the office of another sister, Faye Frye of Baughn & Frye Realtors in Stoneville, early Wednesday morning. Martin brought the quilt top she had spent several weeks cutting and piecing together. After stretching the top, foam filler and bottom over a quilting frame, the ladies moved to separate corners and began the long quilting process.

“It’s like old times,” Martin said.

“We all started quilting when we were children growing up on the farm and it’s been a part of our lives ever since.”

One of four daughters, Martin said quilting and sewing were only a couple of the many crafts learned from their mother.

“She taught us well,” Martin said. “In that household, you learned how to do a little of everything.”

Riddle said she remembered winter days 50 years ago when family and friends joined their mother around a quilting frame to make something special for a new bride or mother.

“It was a wonderful time for us as well,” Riddle said. “The children would all play under the quilt while the women worked above.”

Now, it was the children’s turn to work on the quilt, but few other things had changed. The quilt stretched across the frame in Frye’s office Wednesday was a log cabin design - one of several

patterns passed down from generation to generation.

Martin began collecting, cutting and piecing together the multi-colored fabrics for the quilt long before the quilting process began. She pulled together fabrics from a variety of sources, but she had some help from Frye on determining the overall color scheme.

“Faye asked me about doing a quilt for the Rotary Club to raffle off at this year’s fall festival,” Martin said. “But when I asked about the colors for the borders, she mentioned blue and yellow - the Rotary colors.”

The log cabin pattern chosen for the quilt consists of 48 squares, each containing 17 pieces. The pieces are arranged in interlocking L-shapes around a central red square.

“The arrangement represents the way a log cabin is pieced together,” Martin said. “The red square in the middle symbolizes a fireplace, because that was the central part of the home.”

The queen-size quilt being stitched together for Stoneville Rotary’s raffle contained 816 individual pieces of fabric - each one cut and sewn together by Martin in the week prior to the quilting session. Looking over the different fabrics making up the colorful designs, Riddle recalled times she had laughed when she noticed old dresses she had worn in some of her mother’s quilts.

“She sewed almost every dress we ever wore growing up,” Riddle said. “Years later we’d laugh when pieces of some of those dresses showed up in a quilt mom had made for a friend or neighbor. She never wasted anything.”

Hall might have been a little slower than she was 50 years ago, but her sewing was still neat and precise. In fact, she claims it’s one of the things that keeps her going.

“This is my therapy,” Hall said. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to work on this one, but I’m glad I can.”

Frye said her mother still crochets, sews and quilts on a regular basis. She has made baby quilts for all of her great-grandchildren and larger quilts for her grandchildren.

“I think she’s even working on another one now for a new great-grandchild,” Frye said.

That kind of work ethic proved contagious, having worked its way down to her daughters.

“All of us are into some type of arts and crafts,” Frye said. “All four of us have scroll saws at our houses and do woodwork. And, of course, we still sew and quilt - together whenever we can.”

Martin was the daughter that took up the bulk of her mother’s love for quilting. The quilt the ladies worked on Wednesday was the fifth she made in the last eight months. Like her mother, all of the quilts were for someone else - often for a charitable cause like the one for Rotary.

“I did one for my church to raffle off for the building fund, one to raffle off for a neighbor with cancer and one for the VFW auxiliary to raffle as a fundraiser,” Martin said. “Then I did a baby quilt.”

She said all of them had been log cabin patterns, requiring a lot of small pieces and stitches.

As Martin went back to work on her most recent creation, she stretched her fingers and donned a thimble.

“I can see already I’m going to need a Band-Aid by the time we finish this one,” she said.

Raffle tickets for the quilt can be purchased from members of Stoneville Rotary or by calling Frye at 616-3780.

News editor Steve Lawson can be reached at or at 548-6047.