Published: October 11, 2008 11:26 pm         

Quilters gather to share their secrets

JET — Inside the community center Saturday, old friends, mothers and daughters — even a grandmother and her granddaughter — shared secrets and passed along their knowledge of traditional and state-of-the-art quilt making.

The Four Corners Quilting Retreat is celebrating its fifth year and has again brought together generations of quilters from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri.

“I really like it,” said Sammie Jester. “Quilting in the families go back a long ways.”

Jester said she now quilts with the granddaughters of women who quilted years ago with her own grandmother.

The 32 quilters participating in the retreat— many of which are boarding at the local motel — are spending up to 18 hours a day sewing, ironing, stitching and piecing together what will become family heirlooms. They also are sharing meals, fellowship and talking about the many UFOs, or unfinished projects they had going.

The participants of the Thursday-through-Sunday retreat run the gamut of lifestyles and include retirees who made a living as an over-the-road trucker, registered nurse, special education teacher, rancher, medical technologist and many other professions.

A 25-year-old mother from McKinney, Texas, came to the retreat with her grandmother after her aunt canceled at the last minute.

“I guarantee I’ll be back next year,” Nicole Jimmerson said.

Women who were watching Jimmerson cut pieces of her project said she was a “skilled beginner.”

What originally was intended as a retreat for three or four quilters has turned into a long weekend of nearly three dozen women between 25 and 80 years old.

“It really started with a mother and a daughter,” said Randy Leek, director of this year’s retreat.

Leek and other organizers presented that mother, Connie LaGrow, and daughter, Penny Gregory, with a legacy quilt Saturday afternoon. Gregory, a Houston resident who grew up in Jet, and her mother, LaGrow, who lives just outside of town, organized the first four events.

“This is the mother and daughter who got this done,” Leek said.

The retreat included classes, quilt showing, food and all the time and space participants could ask for to sew.

Leek said this spring Jet would hold another event — the Four Corners Quilt Retreat Spring Splash. Now, she said, quilters will have two events each year to look forward to. The Spring Splash is planned March 19-22 in Jet.

At one of the large tables in the center of the building Saturday, Gregory was busy helping her mom piece together one of her newest creations, secretly hoping, she said, the quilt someday would belong to her.

“The whole time you are making it, you’re thinking about the person you’re making it for,” Gregory said.