Pima Quilt Shop hosts quilting retreat
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By Keri Lunt
Staff Writer
Quilting bees are the reason the pioneers didn’t need Prozac, Deanna Mangum, manager of Stitches Quilt Shop in Pima, said.
The quilt shop recently held its first quilting retreat, an event that was so successful that it will be the first of many, Mangum said.
The weekend was spent at a former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church building in Virden, N.M. The building is now available for rent for occasions such as receptions, reunions and so forth.
The day Stitches opened, April 15, 2007, Mangum said women came into the store and asked if the store would hold a quilting retreat.
“I was so overwhelmed! It was my first day,” Mangum said.
A year later, she and the other employees began planning the retreat, and on Oct. 9 through 11, it took place.
Sixteen quilters from Willcox, Globe, Mesa and Tucson came for the weekend, as well as women from the local areas.
To relax, visit, eat and sew was the purpose of the retreat, Mangum said, and the quilters did just that.
Home-cooked meals were prepared in the building’s full-sized kitchen, as well as a catered Dutch oven meal for dinner on one of the nights. One night for entertainment a group of cloggers from the Virden area performed for the quilters.
On Thursday night, the quilters had a show and tell, displaying their good, bad and ugly quilts for fun.
The following night, the sewers exchanged quilting books.
Quilters either stayed with family, returned home or spent the night in the building in old classrooms that have beds. Mangum said the women who spent the night “just had a ball” with each other in their pajamas.
Each morning, breakfast was served at 8 a.m., and classes began at 9 a.m. Experienced quilters, selected by Mangum, taught classes such as a mystery quilt class that required quilters to select fabric and design a block without a pattern; a scrap master class that taught the sewers how to cut, organize, store and utilize their scrap materials; and more.
Demonstrations were held three or four times a day in between classes and during snack and lunch breaks.
A small store was set up at the retreat that offered notions and machines from Stitches. Each night, Cindy Bryce, an employee at Stitches, would return to Pima to collect items the quilters wanted more of, such as a certain material or thread.
Quilters signed up for the retreat and could pay for classes that provided kits prepared by Stitches, or come to sew on their own.
The second retreat is already planned for the same weekend next year.
Stitches is owned by Nelda Potter and is the sister business to Nelda’s Quilt Shop in Virden. Stitches is located in Pima on Highway 70 next to the Taylor Freeze. For more information call 485-2511.
