Thursday's Missionary Meeting

When we were kids our school bus picked us up and dropped us off in the driveway of a church at the end of our country road. Instead of going straight home from the bus stop on Thursday afternoons, we’d head for the back of the church and down the cement steps, into the basement where my grandmother and her sisters were gathered for the day.

Every Thursday, for years, my Grandma Bessie and her sisters met in the basement of their church to quilt. I loved popping in to see what they were working on after school, and we also loved sampling the cakes and pies leftover from their potluck lunch.

My grandmother and great-aunts were paid to put quilts together for people, and the money they collected was then donated to their “overseas missionaries.” They referred to their Thursday quilting bee as their weekly “Missionary Meeting.”

I can still picture their set up in my mind. The ladies sat around a quilt that was suspended from the ceiling with ropes at each corner. The quilt was secured with thumb tacks to long boards on all four sides, and the boards were attached at each corner with a vice. They stitched from the edges of the quilt toward the center, and as they completed a section of the quilt, the corner vices were removed and the quilt was wound inward around the boards, allowing them to reach a new area for stitching. {I found a photo online that shows a great example, and I've included it at the end of this post.}

And when they finished for the day, the ropes were wound around each corner of the quilt boards, raising it up until it hugged the ceiling, out of reach of little cake-stained hands.

 

My grandmother and great-aunts stitched and chatted and prayed and gossiped, all while hand stitching the top/batting/bottom of a quilt together by hand. Tiny stitches, beautifully practiced, all neat and even and lovely.

Today when I work on my own quilts, I think of those days and the sense of community and fellowship my grandmother and her sisters shared during their missionary meetings every Thursday. I think of the beautiful hand work they graced each quilt with, and wonder who is blessed to own one of the quilts they stitched back then. I long for my quilts to be completed with hand-stitching like theirs, but alas I will run mine through the sewing machine and make quick work of the process.

And when I’m done I will gift this quilt to my daughter. Somewhere among the seams that hold all the pieces together are memories of Grandma Bessie and her sisters, stitched there with my thoughts of them as I created this quilt.

 

Who knew, all those years ago, that the Thursday missionary
meetings would still mean so much to one little girl.

♥

 Not my photo, and not my grandma.

Photo credit: Library of Congress Historical Archives