2018 Featured Quilters
JOYCE WASSICK & MELODIE DEWITT

This year's featured quilters are cousins Melodie DeWitt and Joyce Wassick. They were reluctant to accept this honor since both are relatively new to the craft and have never taken a quilting class. They remember their grandmother, Bessie Smith, doing a lot of quilting. She lived beside Joyce and just down the road from Melodie on Cheat Road. And each of their mothers, Bessie's daughters Dolly DeWitt and Hazel Echard, made exactly one quilt. It wasn't a craft that they learned from their family, but the idea may have been planted in their minds.
　
Melodie became interested in creating quilts after watching a television show about 20 years ago. She read up on the craft, chose a pattern and material, and made her first quilt. She now has a closet full of quilts and, along with Joyce, has made more than 15 memory quilts for relatives and friends during the last 5 years.

Joyce began making quilts a little over 5 years ago. When her son, Kirk, was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Joyce heard of a project making quilts for victims of this fatal disease. She asked Melodie if she would make a quilt to donate, and was surprised when Melodie said, "No." However, in her next breath, Melodie said that they would make a quilt together. Joyce found that the full concentration needed to make a quilt was exactly what she needed at that time. She has continued making quilts at a fast pace.

The cousins enjoy making what they call "rescue quilts". They buy orphan quilt blocks on their frequent antiquing trips and go to work. They enjoy making up stories as they work about where the blocks came from and who created them. They also make "memory quilts" for their friends and relatives using clothing from their loved ones who have passed, and they restore and repurpose damaged quilts. In fact they laugh and say that they forget how to work with new material.
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Despite their reluctance to be honorees, Melodie and Joyce are creative, skillful and very deserving. Both Ann Weimann, quilt show chairperson, and last year's judges were impressed with the quality of the quilts that the pair brought to the 2017 fair. Come to this year's fair and enjoy their beautiful display, along with many other creations by talented quilters.