Sew and So Club celebrates 100 years stitching
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RONAN — The Sew and So Club made their last raffle quilt in 2010. Although they made a quilt this year, it honors the club’s 100-year anniversary and is embroidered with the names of the original members so it won’t be raffled off.
One of the oldest clubs in Lake County, the Sew and So Club began under another name in 1911, a year after the federal government opened the Flathead Reservation to homesteading in 1910. A group of homesteader women began meeting to catch up on their mending and socialize. They called themselves the Coulee Dozen because they had to “cross a coulee when we went to club,” original notes reported.
Original members were Nellie Dumas, Helen Guenzler, Lena Johnson and her 16-year-old daughter Elsie, Fannie Langford, Mary Loosemore, Daisy McConnell, Pauline Olson, Kate Orchard, Marie Smith, Lena Smutchler, Gity Tromnily and Marie Vaughn.
During World War I, the Coulee Dozen disbanded for a while and then started up again as the Sew and So Club. Two quilts made by earlier generations of the club remain, one from 1939 and one from 1952. Both of the quilts are pieces of Round Butte history with names embroidered on muslin squares and pieced by members who are gone now. The quilts were on display at the Mission Valley Quilt Guild Show held in the Ronan High School Gym on July 29 and 30.
Sew and So members also manned a table at the quilt show. They brought their scrapbooks and the 100-year memorial quilt.
Although club member Clara Miller said she is not a historian, she drew a map showing the location of most of the original members with information garnered from the 1910 census.
Over the years, the Sew and So Club made a quilt every year to raffle off. Half the money went to the Ronan Volunteer Fire Department, Miller explained, and half went to the Mission Valley Senior Center in Ronan for meals on wheels. Usually that’s about $500 to each organization.
“It’s the highlight of the winter to get together and quilt,” Miller noted.
Though they sometimes take money out of the raffle money to pay for the fabric, “when it comes down to it, we usually donate it,” Sew and So member Sandy Baertsch said.
Of the group of quilters, Miller admits she has the largest “stash,” or treasure trove of fabric and scraps. Miller explained that member Mary Pettit “gave me all of her scraps and gave me the job” of picking a project each year.
“I could talk ‘em into pretty much anything,” Miller said, laughing with other club members Lou Duford, Elaine Murphy and Baertsch.
As far as having a favorite quilt design the group made, Duford liked the appliqued tulips and the poinsettias the group stitched for Christmas quilts.
“I like the brand quilts,” Miller said, since she felt they fit the agricultural climate of the area.
Several members, such as Miller and Murphy, are the second or third generation to belong to the Sew and So. Miller’s mother was a member, and Murphy’s mother, grandmother and two aunts all sewed with the group.
Not all the members are lifelong quilters. Miller said she picked up quilting when she became a club member, and Baertsch said she learned “when Clara said I would.”
Murphy learned to sew as a child but took up quilting with the Sew and So group as did Duford.
Current members are Frances Abbey, Sandy Baertsch, Gretchen Baker, Margaret Burke, Lorraine Cornelius, Lou Duford, Delores Hoflen, Erika Janich, Velma Madsen, Jean Maxwell, Clara Miller, Elaine Murphy, Mary Smith and Theresa Walter.
The Sew and So Club plans to continue meeting.
They laughed and said they guess they’ll go back to darning socks as the Coulee Dozen did or they may need to make bibs since Miller got cranberries on her blouse at lunch.
The club meets the first Wednesday of every month at 2 p.m. except for the month of August. Members take turns hosting the club meetings at their homes and providing refreshments.
