Tim Hicks - Managing Editor

Wynnell Sullivan, left, and Jennie Cromer talk fabric. In foreground right is a quilt made from the neckties of Cromer's late husband, Durwood Cromer Sr.

While local storytellers kept people in stitches with their humorous yarns at the Edisto Research and Education Center in Blackville, the stories were in the stitches at the nearby Learning Center.

"A Stitch in Time: Quilts and Stories about Quilting" was one of the other features at Barnwell County's Boil, the Barnwell County version of Salkehatchie Stew.

Salkehatchie Stew is a project to culturally and economically develop Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Hampton and Colleton counties through music, drama and storytelling.

The region is defined in that all the counties are connected by the Salkehatchie River.

In the Learning Center on the Edisto REC campus, 39 quilts, from family heirlooms to just finished projects blanketed each room of the former residence.

"There's a lot of stories in these quilts. Each of these quilts has a story," said Lil Stoltzfus.

Stoltzfus and Wynnell Sullivan moved through the house, showing visitors theirs and other people's quilts. The Barnwell Quilting Club helped with the display.

Quilts don't have to be made by one's grandmother to be significant to their owner, said Stoltzfus.

Stoltzfus shows a "friendship" quilt that was given to her by friends before she left Ohio and moved to South Carolina. Each friend had embroidered their names into fabric, usually with another message or symbol too.

Quilts hold a special place in the Mennonite community as families would often rotate around to the different houses to help each family on their family quilt. The "quiltings" would become social gatherings as well as practical work sessions, she said.

Often people create quilts to memorialize someone or fix in fabric the times of one's life.

Stoltzfus showed one quilt made from the fabric of a young woman's wardrobe. The woman died in a car wreck and this was one way to remember her, she said.

Stoltzfus likewise has a piecework fabric that made from the scraps of some of her childhood clothes. Her mother made it and Stoltzfus hopes to have it become part of a quilt eventually, she said.

Jennie Cromer of Blackville had a quilt made in honor of her late husband, Durwood Cromer.
Durwood Cromer had a an extensive collection of neckties, so Cromer had a quilt done from 84 of his old cravats.

For Sullivan, the quilting show was coming home literally. The Sullivans lived in the Learning Center in 1972 when her husband, Dr. Mike Sullivan, was hired at the Edisto research station, she said.

Sullivan had quilts made by her grandmother on display.