EVERY QUILT TELLS A STORY

Cookie Little's flower baskets commemorate her husband Dan's certification as a master gardener. Judy Robinson's award-winning work is inspired by song titles. Betty Cord memorialized Duchess, the family's beloved Bassett hound, now deceased.

Needles, thread and patches of cloth tell many different stories for the members of the River Heritage Quilter's Guild.

These quilts and others by guild members are on display through January at Gallery 100, 6 N. Sprigg St. The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

The guild meets at the Centenary United Methodist Church, 300 N. Ellis St., on the second Monday of each month from September through June. The meeting begins with a half-hour social time at 6:30 p.m.

The guild's Marylou McNair says the members' favorite part of the meeting is "show and tell. People bring things they're working on or have completed to show to the group."

The meeting also often includes a demonstration of a new quilting technique.

"There's a creative aspect to it, certainly more so now days than when people just cut up old clothes," McNair says. "Nowadays people buy new fabric and cut it up into pieces," she says.

Once upon a time, quilting was as low-tech as anything gets.

"Now everybody has all kinds of computer-related quilting," McNair says. "You can design a quilt on the computer. Quite a few get information (about quilts) from the Internet."

People come to the meetings in Cape Girardeau from Bollinger County, the Bootheel and from Anna-Jonesboro, Ill. For awhile, a woman was driving from Paducah, Ky., the mecca of American quilt-making.

The guild includes beginners, experts and everyone in between, McNair says. "Some people come just because they're interested in quilts. They don't even quilt or sew."

One grandmother and granddaughter come together.

The guild currently has no members who are male. "That's not to say we wouldn't be happy to have them," says McNair.

Being so near Paducah has a positive effect on the region's quilters, McNair says. Many members of the guild take classes at the Museum of the American Quilter's Society.

With about 100 members, the River Heritage Quilter's Guild is too large to quilt together as a group. But many of them get together with smaller groups.

Robinson belongs to a quilting group whose members call themselves the Monday Night Literary Society. She admits the only books they talk about are quilting books.

Quilting techniques and materials have changed dramatically since grandma's day. Now most quilters use only new material, and now some companies design fabrics exclusively for quilts.

Quilters call their collection of cloth a "stash." Robinson's almost fills a 5-by-12-foot bookcase. "My husband has suggested that people can shop out of our house," she says.

One of her quilts on display at the gallery, "Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses," incorporates applique, quilting and a handpainted watercolor.

Robinson, like McNair a retired teacher, calls quilting "a passion." She spends four or five hours a day quilting and also teaches it.

One of her quilts was accepted for a juried show at MAQS, the quilter's equivalent of being nominated for an Oscar.

Every quilter has their own technique, McNair says. "Some people like to do all their piecing by hand. Others do it all on the machine."

Machine quilting has come into its own, McNair says. "Women have learned all these new freehand techniques that give really interesting results. Of course, some people are snobby and say, It's machine done."

The days when a quilt was treated like a blanket also are gone. Most bed-size quilts have at least a few hundred dollars worth of material in them, McNair says.

To buy one, the cost can range from $800 to $1,500.

Since forming in 1989, the guild has taken on many community projects. One was to make quilts for law enforcement vehicles in the region. The quilt is there to comfort victims.

Quilts also have been supplied for other groups, including the Safe House and Birthright.

The guild held its own quilt show in 1996 and in planning another in September. The show will be held at the church.

McNair grew up in the South but was an adult before she learned to quilt from ladies at Grace Methodist Church. She says interest in quilts was low back when the idea of getting things ready-made was popular.

McNair has been quilting for 20 years and has made 15 to 20 quilts in that time. Others turn out two or three quilts a year.

"The ones just starting are ones who are most avid," she says. "The are constantly reading and learning, and maybe spurring the rest of us on."