North Coast Needlers
History
This article is part of a series to be presented throughout 2005 to
commemorate North Coast Needlers’ 20th Anniversary year.
How We Came To Be
by Susan Haviland
In the fall of 1983, a small band of quilters joined together
through the Westlake Recreation Department's Adult Education, to take a
class appropriately titled, "Quilt Guild". As we met one another,
we discovered an exciting, larger network of other quilting
enthusiasts. The classes were held on the third Monday of the
month at Parkside Junior High School in Westlake and were conducted by
Kathy Rickard, a former quilt shop owner from Kansas City.
Scheduling was often a problem due to school closings and we were
shuffled from room to room within the school. On one particular
evening, our group met in a biology room and worked on our projects at
lab tables. With the termination of the class and school year,
there was a strong desire to keep our group together and strive toward
the goal of forming a strong and active quilting guild.
In June of 1984, the residential location of Sandi Luther's shop, Hoops
'N' Hollers, provided our group with a new meeting place. Several
new faces from the shop joined together with our class group.
"It’s twelve o'clock and do you know where your quilter is?" was a
question often pondered by spouses and family members. They had
only to look in Sandi's basement where the time of night was often
forgotten. The same schedule of meeting on the third Monday of
each month was followed. An agenda of topics was established for
each meeting. Karen Ballash and Mary Ann Goory took on leadership
and organizational roles to unify and assist our budding new quilt
group in its growth. Possible names for our group were discussed
and the name, "Northcoast Needlers", was first introduced and soon
after became our official name. In those early days, we went
by "Northcoast" as one word and later changed this to our present
day two words, "North Coast". The change was made so that our
name would better fit the initials “NCN”--- North Coast Needlers.
When Hoops 'N' Hollers moved into its Lorain Road shop in North Olmsted
in July of 1985, our group moved too. Publicity for the shop's
opening and for our group brought more new faces to our first meeting
in the shop in August. Our first fund raising activity was a
raffle for a purchased Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt that hung in
Hoop 'N' Hollers in conjunction with the grand opening. Later
that December, a lucky winner was drawn and notified by telephone.
At our September 16th 1985 meeting, a constitution and by-Laws modeled
after those of a sister guild, Keep Us In Stitches, were
introduced. Karen Ballash and Mary Ann Goory led our group in a
discussion of the articles and changes were made. Later that
evening, those in attendance approved and adopted our new constitution
and by-laws. Committees were formed with members volunteering to
serve on them, and annual dues of $12 were first collected. North
Coast Needlers became an established operating quilt guild at that
meeting and this is why September 16, 1985 is our guild’s official
“date of birth”.
After our October 1985 meeting, it became apparent that our new guild
had outgrown our meeting space in Hoops ‘N’ Hollers and we moved to a
conference room in the library of Westlake High School for November and
December. Our newsletter, The Scrapbag, premiered that
November. Nancy Plain was the very first Editor who composed and
typed our then, one and a half page-long first issue. No officers
were elected for the 1985-86 year as it was decided that guild members
needed time to get to know one another better. Karen Ballash
served as acting President and Mary Ann Goory served as
Secretary-Treasurer during that time. Our guild roster dated
November 29, 1985, listed twenty-four members and new members continued
to join from January to August of 1986. In January of 1986, North
Coast Needlers moved to the large meeting room of the newly built
Porter Public Library that was to be our home for many years.
North Coast Needlers has ten original members from our 1985-86 year who
have been in our guild for all of these past twenty years; they remain
members on our present 2004-05 roster. Four of these ladies are
truly founding members, as they were active in the pre-NCN groups that
met from 1983 to 1985, and they played significant roles in helping to
establish our guild. These ladies are:
Mary Ann Goory, founding member
Joined September 16, 1985
Susan Haviland, founding member
Joined September 16, 1985
Gail Radke, founding member
Joined
September 16, 1985
Meg Tew, founding member
Joined September 16, 1985
Susan Knight
Joined November 18,
1985
Helen Cake
Joined February 11, 1986
Gloria Shollenberger
Joined March 11, 1986
Maryann Stanley
Joined March 11, 1986
Gini Baldi
Joined April 8, 1986
Peggy Deierhoi
Joined April 8, 1986
Our Logo
At the December 1987 general meeting of North Coast Needlers, a
challenge contest was announced to guild members to create a design for
an official guild logo. At our February 1988 meeting, drawings of
mostly block designs were put on display and voted on by members.
Then-member, Annabelle Keller, a quilting and fabric-craft teacher and
designer, had her design selected as the winner. She was awarded
a $20 gift certificate and a place in NCN history. Today,
Annabelle still resides in Lakewood and has remained active in quilting
and craft design with several projects published in national magazines
throughout the years. Annabelle’s four-symbol design in white,
green, blues and gold borders relates to North Coast Needlers in the
following ways:
Spool - represents NCN's first
guild-made
rafflequilt, “Scrapbag Spinning Spools”.
Tree - represents the Emerald
Necklace
MetroParks that surround us.
Sailboat – represents Lake Erie and our north coast.
Ohio Star – represents the fact that we are an Ohio
founded and based guild.
After our new logo was selected, Mary Ann Goory drafted a 12-inch block
pattern that was published as the-block-of-the-month in our April 1988
issue of The Scrapbag. Mary Ann also gave an instructional talk
at the meeting on how to piece the block. Many guild members made
blocks and eight of them were incorporated into hostess aprons that
were sewn in early 1989 for our very first quilt show that April.
Constructing the aprons was great fun as a committee worked in Gloria
Shollenberger’s Home Economics sewing room at Westlake High
School. For some, it was our first hands-on experience at using a
serger machine.
The majority of logo blocks made by members were incorporated into our
guild banner that is used at special functions. In 1990, Virginia
Pence and former-member, Terri Shipacasse, pieced ten blocks around a
white center embroidered with “NCN”. Our banner was proudly used
for the first time to welcome visitors to our display in the Law House
at Century Village during “In Celebration of Quilts” in May of 1990.
