JERSEYVILLE - Three generations of women came together to work on a quilt, almost 100 years apart.
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Joan Dougherty loves quilting, and she recently entered her favorite quilt in Jacksonville’s River Country Quilt Show. She was “immediately in tears” when she learned the quilt had won the People’s Choice Award. But this quilt is special, because Dougherty had help from her grandmother and a beloved great-great aunt she never met.
“I worked on this quilt on and off during lots of stressful times in my life,” Dougherty shared. “They always tell you, when you’re a quilter, that you should document the history of it. You should always keep a label on the back…I’m so glad I got that information from my grandma before she passed so that I could get that information to put on there.”
Dougherty’s grandmother, Eileen Ribble, taught her how to quilt when she was in college. As they worked together on this special project, Ribble would tell Dougherty stories of Dougherty’s grandfather’s “Great Aunt El,” Mary Ellen Releford, who quilted the original star in the quilt out of feed sacks from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
As interested as she was in Laura Ingalls Wilder and “Little House on the Prairie,” Dougherty loved hearing about this “pioneer woman” but quickly realized she wasn’t quite what she seemed. Great Aunt El once threw a cat in a wood-burning stove. She only drank goat’s milk and always wore a bonnet. Dougherty believes these stories show the difference between now and the “old days.”
“She obviously was not someone that you could mess with,” Dougherty laughed.
Great Aunt El died in 1948, and Dougherty lost her grandmother a number of years ago. When Dougherty turned 50, she decided she was going to live to be 100. She created a bucket list of things to do in her next 50 years, and entering a quilt show was one of the big items on the list. It was an obvious decision to enter the quilt she made with the women of her family.
To share the quilt with Great Aunt El and her grandmother means a lot to Dougherty. Now, she’s passing on the tradition to her own daughters. The three of them worked together to sew the quilts that are on the girls’ dorm beds, and they often teach sewing classes through the Jersey County Arts Council.
With both daughters off to college, Dougherty plans to continue teaching her classes, but she noted it’ll be different without her kids alongside her. When she decided to enter her quilt in the River Country Quilt Show, her daughters encouraged her.
“I almost chickened out a bunch of times, but they were very supportive,” she remembered. “My girls are always my biggest cheerleaders.”
Looking ahead, Dougherty will continue to sew, and she might enter another quilt show in the future. She will continue to cross items off her bucket list, whether it’s adopting a giant golden retriever named Mulligan or getting a tattoo. She hopes to share her love of quilting and sewing with more people, mostly to continue the legacy of the women who came before her.
“I now teach other people to quilt to kind of carry on that tradition from my grandma,” Dougherty said. “I teach sewing classes to others because I don’t want this art to go away.”
For more information about Dougherty’s sewing classes, including how to sign up, visit her official website at SewingIsMySuperpower.com.
