It was a joint effort that resulted in new quilts decorating a wall of the dining room at Sweet Home’s Senior Center earlier this month.
Murya Scherer, president of the Senior Center Board of Directors, said she’s been working to “spruce up” the center, “not make it blah, bland,” and the two quilts mounted Jan. 18 on the wall were part of that endeavor.
“We’ve put curtains up and having the quilts up now just makes it a little homier, more welcoming,” Scherer said.
She said center Director Jean Holcomb was the one who spearheaded the effort; “she started the campaign to get these done.”
Holcomb said that the bare walls bothered her when she first became involved with the Senior Center.
“When I got on the board, and after COVID, I said, ‘Let’s make some valances for the windows. And let’s hang some pictures or something.'”
Someone suggested quilts, and Holcomb decided to ask her neighbor, Peggy Schroder, an accomplished quilter, to make one.
“I walked down there and I said we’d pay her, but she said she’d be happy to do it for free.”
The quilts were created by Shirley Schumacher, also a board member, and by Schroder, an active quilter for 30-plus years.
Both are “art quilts,” which combine traditional and more modern techniques to create art objects, which are often based on the creator’s experiences, imagery and ideas rather than traditional quilting patterns.
Both depict Oregon landscapes, Schumacher’s a pair of eagles against a mountainous scene, viewed through a frame of quilted stained glass.
Schroder’s also portrays a mountain area, with conifers and wildlife.
Schroder said she’s been interested in art quilting since “about 2009,” when the movement really hit the quilting world,
“It was a big movement,” she said, noting that art quilts got attention in the world of fine arts, resulting in museum exhibitions.
“They were in New York museums,” she said. “Quilts had never been shown that way.”
Schroder has been active in the local quilting scene for years.
She was a founding member of the Log Cabin Quilters, a group formed in 2010 that focused on art quilting.
Her work was part of a SHOCASE fiber art exhibit at Sweet Home City Hall in 2020 and she’s had some of her work published and once won a best-in-show award for her quilting.
Quilts, Schroder said, always have three elements: backing, batting or filling, and a top.
“The difference in art quilts is that anything can be on top – paper, paint, fusibles.”
The flat surface of an art quilt allows it to be more “artistic,” she said.
“I’ve been kind of turned on to art quilts for a long time,” Schroder said. “People who don’t do quilts don’t know anything about it.”
She said she has delivered PowerPoint presentations at P.E.O. meetings and “people were in awe. They didn’t even know these quilts existed.”
Her landscape quilt at the Senior Center includes some detailed applique work which, she said, demonstrates what’s possible in the art quilting movement.
“It’s artwork you wouldn’t be able to do by piecing,” Schroder said, noting that she “fussy cut” images of animals for the mountain scene she created.
“You can cut things out with the cricket machines people use for scrapbooking. Quilting has kind of melded with other things, gone to other mediums, other industries to experiment.”
For instance, she said, she used colored pencils to do shading on the Senior Center quilt.
“A lot of quilts are beaded now. There are no limits.”
Schumacher, who moved to the area “eight or nine years ago,” said she got started in quilting when she retired as a nurse practitioner in 2019.
“I always liked to sew and my goal in retirement was to start quilting,” she said, adding that she got involved in the Jolly Stitchers quilting group at the Senior Center and then took a quilting class.
“I got hooked,” she said.
Schumacher said she wanted her quilt to depict the mountains of Oregon through stained glass.
“I wanted it to be a beautiful scene that you might see up in the mountains of Oregon.”
Schroder said quilting is big business, a “3 billion industry.”
“The thing about quilting is you never get bored,” she said. “There’s always something new.”
Holcomb said she’s very happy with the results.
“I’m very pleased,” she said. “We rent (the Senior Center) out. Why not have something on the walls to make it more attractive?”