RACING IN OAKESDALE

About 50 miles southeast of Spokane, Washington, lies a small town called Oakesdale.  Once the junction of three major railroads, the town was named for Thomas F. Oakes who was then the vice-president for the Northern Pacific Railroad.  It is now a farming community nestled in the beautiful hills of the Palouse and is surrounded by wheat fields.

View of the Palouse Hills from Steptoe Butte

In this small town, there is a group of quilters who call themselves the Sew Ladies.  They meet every-other Wednesday at the home of Russ and Darlene Rickett.  They meet from September through May and then take the summer off.  Their numbers range between eight and fifteen, and their ages range from 55 to 80.  They have been meeting for the better part of eight years and have become a close-knit group. They bring their sewing projects and sew together for most of the day, taking time out for “Senior Lunch” at the school in Oakesdale.

Darlene’s daughter is a member of our Metropolitan Patchwork Society and, while visiting her mother, has had the privilege of sewing with these ladies a time or two.

Dawn’s Scrappy Quilt

Back in January, the MPS guild program was titled “Keeping Your Resolution to Reduce (Your Stash)”.  MPS members, Dawn DeLong and Vickie Rooks, were our speakers that evening and they shared with us many great ideas for getting our stashes organized.  Then they showed us ways we can use all those scraps that inevitably pile up in our sewing areas and followed that up with a small trunk show of beautiful scrappy quilts.  After the program, Vickie and Dawn shared their notes and on-line links with the MPS website chairs, who in turn created a web page that included those notes, links, and a few pictures of Dawn’s and Vickie’s scrappy quilts.

Vickie’s Scrappy Quilt

Darlene’s daughter was so inspired by this program, she went right to work in getting her stash and scraps in order.  And she also shared the link to the newly created web page with her mother.  She was pretty sure the Sew Ladies would find it interesting.

She was right!  The Sew Ladies were very inspired to get their stashes whipped into shape.  Emails with pictures started flying between Beaverton and Oakesdale.  In studying the web page, they found a link to a “Race Quilt Tutorial” and a few of the Sew Ladies thought that would be fun to try.

The date was set for Thursday, May 15th, and planning commenced.  On that day, four

Getting Started

committed women met in the Rickett dining room and set up their machines around the table.  Besides Darlene, the other sewists were Patty Johnson, Charlotte Welker, and Besse Cooney.  Patty brought pretty pastel strips, Charlotte used 30’s reproduction fabrics, and Darlene cut her strips from “Civil War” fabrics.  Besse decided to leave her color comfort zone and used strips of batiks in browns and oranges.  All the strips were 2½” wide.

Besse and Patty

The plan was this:  They would spend the morning sewing all of their strips together, break for lunch and then, in the afternoon, begin the race of turning a 2½” x 1600” fabric strip into a quilt.  Darlene, Patty, and Charlotte connected their strips using a

Charlotte

diagonal seam, while Besse sewed her strips together using the Race II method of placing a 2½” square between each strip.  Russ hung around to take pictures.

Darlene

 

After all the strips (and squares) were sewn end to end, the Sew Ladies took their lunches out to the Rickett’s deck and had a nice relaxing meal overlooking the town.

Afternoon came and it was time to get on with the race.  Except these Ladies learned something about themselves—when it comes down to racing, these gals aren’t all that competitive!  They decided not to race after all, but chose instead to just time themselves to see how long it took each one to sew their quilt.  Patty finished first in two hours and thirty minutes and Darlene was the last to finish in two hours and 50 minutes.

Patty

 

In the process, they learned a couple of things.  Number One: when the strips are still really long, they can get twisted while they are being sewn.  They took care of the twist by chopping it off at the end before folding the strip up to begin another seam.  Number Two:  thread gauge makes a difference in how many bobbins you go through.  Charlotte used Aurafil 50 weight and only went through one and a half bobbins.  Darlene used Star thread, which is 30 weight and used almost all of three bobbins.  Darlene has said she will get Aurafil for her next race quilt.

Charlotte

 

These Sew Ladies had a wonderful time doing this and their quilt tops turned out beautifully!  They each plan to border these tops, if they haven’t

Besse

already.  And they are making plans to do this again, but with more of the group next time.  Darlene figures she can get eight sewists around her table and who knows how many on smaller tables in her living room.

Darlene

Isn’t it great how Dawn and Vickie inspired another group of quilters in a town 350 miles away?  This is what makes the global community of quilters so great!

PS: The “Keeping Your Resolution to Reduce (Your Stash)” web page has been moved to the Links section of our website.  Just go to www.metropatch.com and click on “Links” at the top of the page. 

The Sew Ladies and their Race Quilts