Thanks to a group of employees at JCCC, a 100-year-old woman who started a quilt at age 85 was able to see the amazing finished product. The JCCC scholarship fund benefitted, too.

The results were thanks to the latest project by the Johnson County Cavalier Quilters, a group of four to six women who meet twice monthly during their lunch hours to sew and talk and make works of art from fabric. They don’t count the hours they spend on the quilt, since the time isn’t important.

The group has made three quilts from scratch: one to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the college and two for the college’s Dollars for Scholars auctions. Those two quilts were sold, and the money was donated to student scholarships.

This project was different, however. Connie Ross, adjunct instructor, reading, had a quilt that was only partly finished. Her aunt, Bertha Swanson, then 85, had painstakingly completed the embroidery and the applique work (where a cut-out design is sewn to another piece of material). It still needed to be quilted, though. It needed a back and some edges, and all those pieces had to be stitched together.

Ross didn’t want a machine to do the quilting. If the applique and embroidery had been hand-done, the rest should be, too, she decided. So it sat in storage for 15 years.

“I couldn’t find a place, at least not locally, that would do it all by hand,” Ross said.

She did, however, have a neighbor down the street who also worked at JCCC and was a founding member of the Johnson County Cavalier Quilters – Mary Funk, adjunct instructor, English.

The group agreed to help Ross finish the quilt her aunt had started, but only because they understood the clock was ticking. If Swanson was ever going to see the finished product, the quilt needed to be finished now.

“We need to make it clear: we don’t do quilting for other people unless they’re 100 years old,” said Funk emphatically.

Part of the money Ross paid the Cavalier Quilters will go to the JCCC scholarship fund, just like the money they earn from selling their original creations.

Current members of the Johnson County Cavalier Quilters include Funk; Janna Willnauer supervisor, Access Services; Jenny Mahieu, interpreter, Access Services; Ibby Daugherty, systems administrator, Administrative Computing Services; and Renee Arnett, director, Career Development Center. The first four women contributed to this particular project.