Quilting the Many Into One: Missouri bicentennial quilt on tour throughout state

History takes up a lot of space. Many thousands of pages in hundreds of books have been written to cover Missouri’s history. The Mississippi River Tales Mural on the Cape Girardeau flood wall covers nearly 18,000 square feet. The Cape Girardeau County Archive Center has 4,500 cubic feet of historical records going back to before the Civil War.

Imagine trying to represent 200 years of history for one county in a six-by-six square-inch quilt block.

That’s exactly what more than 100 quilters were tasked with when making the Missouri State Bicentennial Quilt. Starting in 2018, a call went out to Missouri quilters to submit blocks that represented their county. After receiving hundreds of submissions, the Missouri Quilters Guild chose the best 124 blocks to represent each county in the state, plus the city of St. Louis. All of the selected blocks were sent to the Missouri Star Quilt Company to be pieced together and quilted.

Jill and Riley Bock created the New Madrid County quilt block. At first glance, this block looks as if it could be found on any quilt: It’s just several different strips of cloth, laid diagonally across the block. However, approximately two-thirds from the top, there is a horizontal fracture running across the design, shifting each strip over an inch to the right. This, of course, represents the New Madrid Fault Line and the major earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.

Riley, a lifetime resident of New Madrid County, originally came up with this design in the 1980s and had his wife Jill quilt it onto the back of a T-shirt for him.

“Jill was making a quilt for our son,” Riley says. “I thought it would kind of be nice if we had something that represented the New Madrid earthquake.”

More than 30 years later, Riley, a trustee of the state historical society, heard the discussions about the Bicentennial Quilt.

“Toward the end of the call for pieces, there was no submission for New Madrid County,” Riley says. “So, I recruited Jill to submit the piece.”

They both agreed resurrecting Riley’s design would be perfect for the project. However, even though there were no other entries, Jill wasn’t confident her block would be chosen.

“If it was ugly,” Jill says, “I had a feeling they wouldn’t have chosen it.”

Of course, it was chosen, and Jill and Riley felt flattered.

The Perry County quilt block is on display within the Missouri bicentennial quilt. It was made by Donna Ballman and JoAnn Clements of Perry County.Submitted Photo

JoAnn Clements and Donna Ballman created the block that represents Perry County, using a swatch of an agricultural scene with barns and farmhouses, cows and sheep, pumpkins and sunflowers that was a lucky find in Ballman’s stash of material. She and Clements think it does a lot to represent Perry County.

“There are two American flags,” Ballman says, “which shows our patriotism and support for the military. Plus, it also has a few quilts on a clothesline.”

Sewn over the middle of this background is a piece of green material in the shape of Perry County. The face of the Perryville Courthouse clock is printed on it, along with the first line of Perryville High School’s alma mater: “In the Heart of Perry County, founded by old pioneers.”

Clements used a regular desktop printer to print the image of the courthouse and a wide appliqué stitch feature on her sewing machine to make the border around the county.

She says she liked this stitching because “it’s uneven, and most things in life are not even.”

The Cape Girardeau block is a part of the Missouri bicentennial quilt. It was made by Robyn Gragg of Lone Jack, Mo.Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

Beth Pike, senior strategic communications associate for the State Historical Society of Missouri, has been part of the state bicentennial celebration project since 2019 and is chaperoning the quilt around the state. Pike says she had zero experience with quilting before joining this project.

“My great-grandmother quilted, and I have some of her quilts, but unfortunately, that gene did not get passed down,” she says.

Pike says she appreciates and admires the workmanship that goes into quilting, and the craftsmanship on the bicentennial quilt, especially.

“It kind of tells us a unique story, because it’s from the perspective of the quilter,” she says.

Pike uses the St. Louis block as an example, stating most people would expect to see the Arch. However, quilter Linda Roberts went a different way: Inspired by her niece who attended the Missouri School for the Blind, Roberts simply stitched several tiny dots in Braille that read, “City of St. Louis.” The first Braille printing press in the United States was invented in St. Louis in 1865.

“It just shows that the quilter brought something to the historical background that not everybody knows,” Pike says.

Since the pandemic interrupted the 2021 bicentennial celebration, Pike is happy the quilt is again making its way throughout the state so people have a chance to see it.

“Pictures don’t do it justice,” Pike says. “You really have to see it in person.”