Patriotic patchwork: Quilters express appreciation for military through the making of special quilts

Ten-year-old Ellis Brown and her 5-year-old sister Jonna spent the first snow day of the school year Thursday quilting with their grandmother Nancy Bishop.

That's not to say they were missing out on anything like sledding or snowman-rolling; quilting with grandma, they said, is instead a sort of rite of passage.

"And it's a lot better, I think, than being on computers all day," Bishop said.

Though Bishop is a seasoned quilter and member of the River Heritage Quilt Guild, the tradition part started more than a year ago when she helped Ellis and Jonna's elder sister Marah, 11, make a quilt for Joe Bishop, Marah's grandfather and Nancy's husband who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. But the project was more than a regular quilt; it was a Quilt of Valor, a special large quilt in a patriotic design which is then presented to a veteran during a ceremony to thank them for service to the country.

Navy veteran Joe Bishop poses with a Quilt of Valor his wife, Nancy, and granddaughter, Marah Brown, made for him in his home Thursday.Tyler Graef ~ Southeast Missourian

Bishop recalled how the process of quilting with her granddaughter while trying to keep the project a secret from her husband was time-intensive, but paid off in the end.

"We made sure he didn't see it beforehand," Bishop said. "I just told him he had to go to this presentation."

"I'd gotten other (normal) quilts before," Joe said. "But it was really special to be receiving this one."

Having seen the process her sister went through to make the quilt, Ellis resolved to begin her own Quilt of Valor earlier this year for her other grandfather, Joe Brown, who served during the Gulf War as a military policeman in the Air Force.

Ellis said it felt at first like a big challenge since the only things she'd sewn previously were small projects like a skirt or a plush pig. But her grandmother was able to walk her through the hard parts and show her how to use the special long-arm sewing machine used for stitching in the detail designs.

"The stars were the best part," Ellis said. "But the stars are also hard. Really hard to do. Mine turned out floppy."

Nancy Bishop stands in front of a sign in her sewing room warning of "Quilt Pox," a fictional condition referencing the addictive nature of quilting as a hobby.

Making the quilt, she said, required more than 12 hours of sewing alone, not to mention the design and arranging steps.

But those sorts of challenges, she said, are part of why she enjoys quilting and why she said she plans to keep up the hobby when she and her sisters move with their parents to Montana in the coming months.

Plus, she said, giving the finished quilt to her grandpa brought them closer together. She said it feels good to know that when they leave, her grandpa will have something warm to wrap up in and remind him of her.

"At first he didn't know what was going on," she said. "But then he said he really liked it."

Meanwhile, though her younger sister Jonna hasn't yet graduated from the little hand-crank Singer on which her grandmother is teaching her the fundamentals of sewing, she said she's next in line. The grandpas Joe may be spoken for, but Jonna's looking forward to making her own Quilt of Valor to keep the tradition going.

Ellis Brown lays out fabric squares while building an "I-Spy Quilt" Thursday.TYLER GRAEF

tgraef@semissourian.com

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