Raising Connections
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Raising Connections
Four County Quilters Guild 01-26-2026
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Rachann talks with Melinda Horner, a representative of the Four County Quilters Guild, which meets the second Tuesday of every month in Mount Airy, Maryland. The guild gets together and quilts, presents speakers who talk about quilting, and welcomes anyone whether they have been involved in quilting or not. They'll teach you how!
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Audio file
RCP Podcast 4 Counties Quilt Guild Total Release Date 1-26-26.mp3
Transcript
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This morning, we have a fun and interesting guest, as always, Melinda Horner.
and I have had a wonderful talk.
We're sitting in the Raising Connection studios.
We've been looking at quilts this morning.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you're from?
I'm Melinda Horner and I'm from Walkersville, Maryland.
I've been doing hand work and quilting since a very young age.
you're wearing are diamond glass.
Why do you surround yourself with handcraft arts?
They're almost like a billboard of who you are.
And as a quilter, I do tend to wear things that either
or fabric that are quilt patterns or the jacket that I made with quilt blocks.
It's an outwardly statement of who you are without having to tell someone who you are.
My daughter and I will have conversations about, do you tattoo your body?
And sometimes my mood is one way and sometimes my mood is the other.
a beautiful art hand good on a jacket.
I might feel flowers one day, and the next day I might feel horses.
And she's like, oh, that makes sense.
A beautiful jewelry, a beautiful piece of art that you can wear to express that personalization.
Four Counties Quilting Guild, did I say that right?
Is part of the organization that you're in the leadership for.
Our guild, we focus on new members
A guild provides a safe space for people to come and really share ideas about quilting and life.
Great friendships are made through the guild.
It is, it's just a wonderful place to come learn and share ideas.
So a guild isn't something, it's not juried, it's not a level of skill.
It's something that's open to everyone.
For a group of people that have one interest in a field.
So I know we'll do this at the end, but I bet there's a listener out there going, I used to do this.
I've got there sitting in the attic and I don't know how to use it.
at the local library in Mount Airy.
may be a top that needs to be finished.
She's a new member, and that's how we met her.
She just happened to have these quilts in her car, and we would love to see them, and she brought
these beautiful heirloom tops.
And that's exactly what she was looking for, was somebody who could help her finish these quilts.
And we all got to share ideas as far as how we would finish them versus me as a hand quilter.
But there's still a lot of people out there that will hand quilt them for them as well.
So I hope one day that I get the opportunity to finish one of her quilts.
So we've got to break this down a little bit.
And you started it off with the traditional, the modern, and the art quilting.
to make these beautiful patchwork traditional quilts that we still make today.
And they all go back to those traditional original designs.
The modern quilts, the modern designs, the fabrics are different.
You see more solid fabrics used in the modern quilting.
And then the art quilting, that's just amazing.
It's such a wide, vast, broad spectrum from portraits to landscapes.
It all comes together in something usable, washable, giveable, made with love and time.
That's one of the things that's kind of frowned upon when people express that quilts are blankets.
And there's so much more that goes into a quilt.
Even tied quilts are just as special.
Now, a tied quilt, is that the polar fleece
Well, that would be more of your blanket style.
They're considered more comforters.
Tack quilt with the little fuzzies in the middle.
And when my daughter was born, we found her taking the tacking and tickling her nose.
Genetics that work through the love of quilts and comforters.
And then there's the act of quilting.
There's piecing, there's toppers.
There's an actual person that's in mind when you start a quilt.
And then you get your fabric and you cut your
fabric up, you sew it back together again.
And then again, that's the roots of our country with our cotton here in the United States.
And we also have our wool fleece that we use for our wool batts for our quilts.
Then the quilt's layered based
twisted together either by thread or pins.
And that has become an art in itself, just like the traditional quilting.
Let me break this down a little bit.
The design in the fabric is the piecing.
And then the backing of it is what's against your skin.
And then the quilting is sewing in a pattern the pieces together.
Yes, you're holding the three layers together with the quilting.
And this can be done by individuals.
It can be done by different people.
Is it sort of like the plumber and the electrician and the finish person?
So somebody does the top, somebody does the middle, and somebody does the quilting?
And we do, we have designated sewers.
And then we'll have another person that will finish the quilt by doing the binding.
move a little bit faster by having a team of people working together versus, one person.
Anybody thinks four to six weeks is a long time.
You can rock and roll with the best of them.
talk about all of the things that go into that community and team and what the guild does.
Welcome back to Raising Connections.
What's the difference and what's your personal take on the difference?
of that quilt, the drape of the quilt changes.
The fabrics warm up as you quilt it.
forms to the body so much easier.
It just falls gracefully onto a bed.
A long arm quilt, it seems flatter.
The overall look of it is different.
And I asked a long armer years ago, when does a quilt lose that look?
And that's one of the things as quilters, we want our quilts to be used.
And it's often controlled by a person sitting here doing the motion as you do it.
It's almost like holding a steering wheel and driving the sewing machine.
And some of them are computer operated as well.
Rock them through and you would pull them and the stitches would be different lengths.
And everyone has their own stitch.
Everyone has their own stitch and as
I teach people to hand quilt or big stitch quilt.
I said, you'll find your stitch.
And the key to hand quilting or big stitching is just having even stitching.
These women who quilted, it was their quilting.
That was the way that they showed their best of their stitching ability was those
The batting was different back then too.
It's not as dense as it is today, which allows for the needle to go through a little bit firmer.
And I'm thinking, an inch is only how long?
But that was when clothes were handmade.
You needed that because the strength of the garment was in the stitching.
And when I look at some of those quilts,
of that fabric is where that hand stitch went through it.
There is so much to talk about with the history of quilts.
I want to take us on something modern.
And you said there's a resurgence amongst the youngsters.
Yeah, there is a group out there now of young folks that are very interested in the hand arts.
And we, in our past, through our philanthropy,
philanthropy, we worked with 4-Hers and had them learning to quilt.
They make their own little bookmark.
I come up with ideas for them to be able to hand stitch with yarn.
They'll be hand quilting something just
So many people have had an experience with quilting earlier in their life, but they
don't get to revisit it again till they retire.
And that's one thing that is changing.
There's young people that may start with their garment sewing, making clothes for themselves.
And it does build confidence in you as you build your sewing skills.
And that's one thing about the quilting community.
You get that reassurance and you have people to ask questions and help you along the way.
And it often helps the learning process.
Do you find that's a special community?
It's a very special place to share, not just your quilting art, but what's going on in life.
that are shared through our group.
We often say that, where there's quilters, there's cookers.
And we have guilds that refer to themselves as we're an eating group.
And that goes back to how women used to get together, you know, 100 years ago.
And then that's when the quilting bees began.
And I think it helps women, whether it was pioneer times or today, kind of keep our sanity.
You can keep your hands busy, a sense of community, and that social interaction.
Anyone who went through COVID or has been
isolated in life, you miss part of your humanity when you're not connected.
I think there should be a t-shirt.
Absolutely, with quilting on it, yes.
Yeah, and I love that because so much of, for myself and others,
troubling you or thoughts that maybe...
And that sounds just like what you have expressed.
from Montgomery County down around the Laytonsville area.
And he was a psychiatric doctor.
It's a little bit of everything.
If our listeners want to find you, where do we find you?
And our website is fourcountyquilters.org, and we also have a Facebook page.
There's so much about the guild that we haven't even touched today.
You'll have to come back and guest another time.
Thank you for joining us today.
We'll make some more connections.