For Judy McGraw, hand quilting isn’t just a hobby but something that runs in the family.
McGraw recently returned from placing a quilt in the Anderson County Fair where she won grand champion.
The quilt has significance because the individual boxes within the quilt were made by her husband’s aunt Hattie in the 1930s.
She took the 1930s designs and built a quilt around it. She kept the 1930s look, which consisted of pastel colors, McGraw said.
McGraw has been quilting for 25 years and got into it because her mother was a quilter.
As a child, McGraw became interested in sewing after joining 4-H, but it wasn’t until she was in her 30s when she took up quilting.
McGraw and her mother had begun a quilt when she was 12, but her mother died about a year later and they were not able to finish.
McGraw eventually completed the quilt and has sewn several others since then in honor of her mother.
McGraw stays with the old tradition of hand quilting, a practice that’s grown increasingly rare.
“There aren’t many hand quilters anymore,” she said. “Now, machines are used.”
It takes roughly a year for McGraw to complete a quilt from start to finish.
McGraw, part of the Sunflower Quilt Guild, uses a lap hoop, which allows her to put the material through the hoop and she can sew the quilt.
While she is sewing she likes to watch television, she said.
She begins from the middle and works her way out.
“It’s not something I worry about,” she said. “I work on it when I have time, unless there is something coming up like a fair.”
McGraw doesn’t sell her quilts or wall pieces, with the exception of a couple of times when she has auctioned off a quilt and sent the money to a charity.
