After six years without a show, the Sunflower Quilters Guild will have quilts galore at this weekend’s show in Riverside Park.
Judy McGraw of Iola is the show’s featured quilter. Truth be told, McGraw has enough quilts of her own to have a stand-alone show.
A walk through her and husband Duane’s home reveals quilts of all shapes and sizes that serve as table runners, wall hangings, bedspreads and more.
To McGraw, it’s a rewarding hobby, but clearly, they are of a professional level.
McGraw, 75, began sewing quilt blocks as a pre-teen at her mother’s side at their rural home 3 miles north of Iola.
“But I lost interest,” she said. It was the early 1960s, after all.
Judy attended the one-room North Maple Grove elementary school until it was consolidated with Carlyle’s school, which she attended from 4th to 8th grade.
At her 8th grade graduation, she wore her first store-bought dress.
She graduated from Iola High School.
“I haven’t gone too far home,” she said.
It would be more than a decade later that she would find those stashed-away quilt blocks and finish her first quilt.
“My mother had since passed away,” she said. By then she and Duane, who married in 1968, were living in Welda.
IN 1970, the young couple moved to Iola where they purchased a flower shop which they named Duane’s Flowers. After 41 years, the McGraws sold the store to their daughter, Kristina, in 2018. Judy continues to work at Duane’s, keeping its books and making deliveries.
“But I only work from 9:30 to 3,” she said. “I’m not ready to retire. I like to keep busy. And there’s only so much quilting you can do.”
To be sure.
McGraw estimates she has 37 quilts, not including those she has made for family members, including six grandchildren.
She takes advantage of the abundance by switching out the bedspread in her and Duane’s bedroom every month.
It takes McGraw a full year to make a bed-size quilt. If that sounds like a long time — which we’re not disputing — it’s because she hand-stitches her quilts, which, she says, is somewhat of a dying art.
