Seven sisters sew for a cause.

Once a year, seven sisters gather in the fellowship hall of a modest Patton, Mo., church to catch up, laugh and stitch. This is the second year the girls have met to sew their "Seven Sisters" quilt that will be auctioned off later in the year with the proceeds going to the Reagan Chapel United Methodist Church. The auction takes place at the annual Harvest Festival in September.

Sharran Seabaugh, the youngest of the group, laughs and says it's mainly their children who bid on the quilt. Last year Jackie Varner's son won with an $1,800 bid. It was between her son and Sharran's son.

"We didn't know they were going to bid," said Jackie. "They just started bidding out of their heads!"

About 20 years span between the eldest sister, Velda Pogue, 77 and the youngest, Sharran, 58. Jackie, Lauretta Welker, Donna Yount, Faye Bollinger, and Maxine Fulton, make up the other five. All live in the Patton/Sedgewickville area except for Jackie, who resides in Ste. Genevieve, Mo.

The tight knit siblings try to get together every two or three months.

Sharran says they call those "sister days."

"You never know how long all seven of us are going to last and be able to gather together like this," she says.

Quilting has been a part of their family for years. Velda started quilting when she was five or six years old. "It just came natural, I always liked it," she says. A back injury has kept her from being "in the middle of it" and as involved as she used to be, but she still hems the quilt. She moved back to Patton in 1991 after 40 years away.

When asked if she kept all her younger siblings in line, Velda laughs and says, "No!" Sharran chimed in saying "I think that's hard for any of us to do."

Maxine remembers their mother always having a quilt up when the girls were younger and says it was almost like a form of punishment. "Now you go in there and start quilting," she says, echoing her mother. Then she'd have us take it out and restitch it if there was a loop that was too loose or too big saying if someone caught their toe in it the whole thing would unravel, explains Maxine. "She was a good teacher."

"I decided then I'd have nothing to do with quilting," says Sharran as she works steadily on her own sewing machine. She learned to quilt just two years ago.

Suddenly Maxine pipes up: "Oh! I finished the first square. Neat." She calls to Faye whose job is to press the completed squares.

"When Sharran was a baby she vowed to never quilt, now she is the best one of all of us," said Maxine, getting back to her stitching. "Sharran is in charge. Just today." They all laugh.

"I think it's just wonderful that we're able to do this," says Maxine, who, like her sister Velda, also moved back to the area in 1991.

"We all moved away and ended up moving back to the same area," Donna said, as she stitched on a sewing machine across from her sister.

After Maxine moved back to Patton she started the Blue Creek Quilters group in her basement. She always quilted and tried to teach others as she and her husband moved around the country. Often she quilted to raise money for her church, but also because it was fun.

"I once taught an 81 year old woman to quilt when we were living in Winchester, Mass..," she says.

Now the Blue Creek Quilters, a group of about 13 ladies including five of the sisters, gather to quilt for people and charities and also for themselves. She started the group for a sense of companionship and as an outlet for the community.

"We have a lot of fun," says Maxine.

It shows. When they gather for a picture, she teases Velda, telling her to hold the quilt up higher in front of her. Velda responds, "What, do you want me to cover my face?"

The seven sisters erupt in another round of laughter.