By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Three Marion women get together twice a week to thread needles and put their fingers to work for charity.

Grace Yoder, Margaret Tice, and Mary Anne Yerion keep busy with an activity that has become a dying art. They hand-stitch quilts.

Right now there are the only three members of their quilters’ guild, but the number of quilters in the group has ranged as high as 13 in the years since the quilters first came together in 1986.

“We need to give credit to the United Methodist Women because they started it,” Yoder said.

However, the group contains quilters who attend different churches and anyone is welcome to join. They don’t even need experience.

“We’ll teach them if they want to learn,” Yoder said.

In the 1980s, demand for quilters became high because few women had time to do the painstaking work themselves.

Tice said she used to work at a hospital alongside Bula Good, a founding member of the group. That’s how she became familiar with them. She likes hand sewing.

Yoder’s mother taught her to use a sewing machine when she was 10. She taught her to stitch by hand even younger.

Yerion also has quilted since she was a child. When she moved from California to Marion to be near her daughter, her daughter proudly told community members that her mother is a quilter.

Having married a man in the military, Yerion had the opportunity to see quilting as done in other cultures. She said it was interesting to see the differences.

Although they have no shortage of quilts to finish, the women take on additional projects as time permits.

Rates begin at $60 for a baby quilt, $120 for a twin quilt, $130 for a full quilt, $140 for a queen quilt, and $150 for a king quilt. Binding is an additional charge and prices may be higher for particularly intricate patterns.

Money they raise is donated to charitable causes. During the last year, they gave money to the food bank, Marion Elementary School, western Kansas wildfire relief efforts, and Red Cross.

“We meet Tuesday 1 to 3 p.m. and Thursday 10 a.m. to noon as a rule,” Yoder said. “We’d love to have new friends. Come to the quilt room in the Eastmoor church basement.”