"There's a lot of sharing going on and there are some super talented people in this group," shopkeeper and veteran quilter Evelyn Morgan observed as June's "Late Night Sew" participants pulled themselves away from work stations for a quick meal before sunset.
"It's always a changing crowd. As you can see they are each doing their own things. Quilters are famous for buying fabric and not working it," Morgan said with a chuckle, explaining the monthly group sewing sessions are an excellent solution to that syndrome.
The quilters begin at 2 in the afternoon and continue at their own pace until the midnight hour, Morgan said before adding "The first time we did it one person kept sewing until 3 in the morning, so we ended it at midnight after that!"
Quilt pieces on the tables during the June gathering reflected interests of the artisans and their families.
Spanning considerable mileage, Mary Hickey of South Shore was working on a Cleveland Indians quilt for her daughter in Denver.
The evening's quilting party also included a mother-and-daughter team, Maggie Haferly and Peggy Ramey, from "downtown Carter City," Morgan noted.
Nearly all of the quilters had modern, often high-tech, sewing machines built in foreign lands by companies unfamiliar to most Americans. At least two, however, carried highly coveted "Featherweight" sewing machines built by the Singer company (quilter Mary Skaggs noted hers is a "Centennial" version), for use by upscale, on-the-go dressmakers of a bygone era.
"They were so well made and they have such a pretty stitch … they are coveted by quilters," Morgan said, adding she has five of them herself.
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