Health Traveling Quilt's Story

The creation of the idea for the Health/AIDS quilt started the day after the Mennonite World Conference in Acsention, Paraguay.  One of the sessions included various denomination world leaders on a panel discussing how  they could, which included Methodists, Catholic, Lutheran and Mennonites work together around the world. The session brought an awareness of how we all live in the world and need to work together to address the needs of the world.

At the Conclusion of the conference, a Sunday, my travel partner and she was also a pastor from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, Ruth,  went for a walk on the streets of Ascension.  In Ascension, people did not travel and do things on Sunday as it is a "Day of Rest" so the streets were extremely quiet.  As we walked to observe some graffiti or a painted story on a building wall, two other young gals did the same and then they started taking pictures.  As I realized they spoke English, I offered to take a picture of them with their camera.  In response they asked where we were from and why we were in Ascension.  We had all been at the Mennonite World Conference, only they came from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  My long time friend worked at Conrad Grabel and so I mentioned I had a friend from Waterloo.  By this time, my travel partner was realizing who we were talking with and tried to guide our conversation as the woman I was speaking to had been her child's music teacher at Conrad Grabel and Ruth respected her highly.  But I continued on putting the puzzle of friendships together as Carol told of a Professor at Conrad Grabel had encouraged her to write a song to bring awareness to the global issues surrounding AIDS.  His research had showed that every four seconds someone dies from AIDS in the world. After a sometime of encouragement by the Peace Professor at Congrad Grabel, Carol received her song with every a beat of every four seconds.  Carol Weaver and I soon realized we had the same friend, Lowell Ewert.  Ironically, Lowell and I grew up a half mile apart as children on farms near Delft, Minnesota, and through my life my nick name was "Neighbor".  How fitting that Lowell wasn't their but through friendships, a neighborhood developed their on the streets of Ascension.

During North American Relief Sale meetings in Iowa City, Barb Schrag and I sat and she had a vision for me to make a Health/AIDS quilt.  It was one of those moments when you don't say "no" as there is just an air around that I knew this was about the work of MCC and I needed to figure out how to raise funds for the children of the world who didn't have their parent(s) which meant they didn't have education and probably enough food.  So, I went back to Minneapolis with a purpose - but how?

Shortly after while at a South Minneapolis Quilters meeting, I won a door prize of fabric and was told, "If someone can figure out what to do with plain colored fabric, it's Marlys".  Yes, there was my answer and the Minnesota Shop Hop fabric had included some linear fabric for the sashings between the solid colored Kona fabrics. Due to my work schedule, quilting at home is limited and when I headed west to quilt with my cousins at the Pacific Ocean, the fabrics went in the suitcase and a pattern would be developed.  From the smaller picture above you can see the quilt started with the yellow (lighter) color at the top and the purple (heavier) colored at the bottom.  And yes, there needed to be four colors in the quilt and somehow I had envisioned an EKG on the top color (which was yellow).  That just didn't work for numerous reasons.  Then the answer came, the quilt needed to be "upside down" to symbolize the "Upside down" worlds the people live in who have lost family members from AIDS!  Once I gave the quilt the new direction, it all worked and the EKG was added with bright green bias tape.

Once Connie Lapp at the MCC Resource Center Quilt Room received the quilt, she also questioned how to have the quilt hand quilted.  They had never quilted something like this but in her search; you can see the beautiful simple hand quilting that has bound the quilt together.

The Traveling Health/AIDS Quilt is available by contacting Les Gustafson Zook a the Goshen MCC office.